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A brute-force attack is a cryptanalytic attack that can, in theory, be used to attempt to decrypt any encrypted data (except for data encrypted in an information-theoretically secure manner). [1] Such an attack might be used when it is not possible to take advantage of other weaknesses in an encryption system (if any exist) that would make the ...
In cryptanalysis and computer security, password cracking is the process of guessing passwords [1] protecting a computer system.A common approach (brute-force attack) is to repeatedly try guesses for the password and to check them against an available cryptographic hash of the password. [2]
Though brute-force attacks (e.g. dictionary attacks) may be used to try to invert a hash function, they can become infeasible when the set of possible passwords is large enough. An alternative to brute-force is to use precomputed hash chain tables. Rainbow tables are a special kind of such table that overcome certain technical difficulties.
Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password against guessing or brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability ...
Bruce Schneier notes that even computationally impractical attacks can be considered breaks: "Breaking a cipher simply means finding a weakness in the cipher that can be exploited with a complexity less than brute force. Never mind that brute-force might require 2 128 encryptions; an attack requiring 2 110 encryptions would be considered a ...
Brute force attack or exhaustive key search - in this attack every possible key is tried until the correct one is found. Every cipher except the unbreakable Information-theoretically secure methods like the one time pad is vulnerable to this method, and as its difficulty does not depend on the cipher but only on the key length - it's not ...
Brute force method or proof by exhaustion, a method of mathematical proof Brute-force attack , a cryptanalytic attack Brute-force search , a computer problem-solving technique
Brute force attacks can be made less effective by obfuscating the data to be encoded, something that makes it more difficult for an attacker to recognise when he has cracked the code. One of the measures of the strength of an encryption system is how long it would theoretically take an attacker to mount a successful brute force attack against it.