How Password Cracking Works?

Password cracking is done by hackers and uses specialized software and tools to make the process faster more efficient and automated without the explicit knowledge of the users. However several techniques are followed and may be utilized by the attackers to crack passwords such as dictionary attacks, brute-force attacks, rainbow table attacks, and so on.

• Dictionary attacks are used for deciphering passwords and the hacker uses a list of commonly used passwords or words from a dictionary as potential passwords and then passes it to the software and the software systematically goes through each word in the list and tries it against the target account until the correct password is found and this method is very effective against weak passwords that are easily guessable, such as “password123” or “admin.”

• Brute-force attacks are useful for deciphering long and complex passwords with high computational power and a substantial amount of time is required to crack until the correct password is discovered.

• An attacker would use all possible character combinations starting from the single, then on to two characters, and keep trying until the password is deciphered with the advancement of technology and high computations pics, attackers can efficiently run brute-force attacks and crack passwords within a reasonable amount of time.

• For example, let’s consider a simple password like “local123.” Some possible combination are local1, olcal1, cloal1, lcoal1, oclal1, colal1, aolcl1, oalcl1, laocl1, alocl1, olacl1, loacl1, lcaol1, claol1, alcol1 and so on.

• Rainbow table attacks are sophisticated approaches to password cracking and use a precomputed table containing a large number of password hashes and their corresponding plaintext passwords.

When a hacker obtains a password hash from a system, will look it up in the rainbow table to quickly determine the plaintext password associated with that hash and is very effective against systems that store passwords in a hashed format without salting.

For example, let us assume a website that stores user passwords as hashed values in its database. An attacker who got access to the hashed passwords can use a rainbow table to look up the hashes and retrieve the plaintext passwords for gaining unauthorized access to user accounts.

Password Cracking is a technique used to gain access starting from personal information and applies to organizational security. As with the ongoing advancement of technology data protection and management are very important and have a vital role in the prevention of cyber fraud and hacking.

Creation and management of unique and strong passwords are the ways to enforce data security and as well as periodically make necessary updates. However, hackers or cybercriminals can steal and get access to personal and sensitive data by employing the password cracking technique also for individuals and businesses.