Brute force attack - definition
Brute force attack - definition
Brute force attack is a cryptographic method and a security breach technique, consisting in a systematic, exhaustive search of the space of possible keys, passwords or other credentials in order to gain unauthorised access to protected computer system resources. The technique assumes, that given sufficient time and computing resources, any security measure based solely on a secret value (e.g. password, encryption key) can be broken.
Brute force is considered a primitive attack, but effective in situations, when other methods (such as dictionary attacks, social engineering or cryptanalysis) fail. In its simplest form, it involves trying successive combinations of characters until a correct match is obtained, which makes its effectiveness strongly dependent on the length and entropy of the password or key under attack.
From the point of view of protection against a forceful attack, security systems implement mechanisms such as time delays, account blocking after a certain number of failed attempts, captches and cryptographic hash functions with a high computational cost (e.g. bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2). In symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, design algorithms such, so that the key length results in an exponential increase in the time required for a brute force attack, which, at the current state of the art, makes it impractical.
In the context of cyber security, brute force remains one of the primary attack vectors used by automated scripts, botnets and penetration testing software (e.g. Hydra, John the Ripper), therefore its identification and effective neutralisation is an indispensable element in the design of resilient IT systems.
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