Password Cracking (Brute-force Attacks)

With time, brute-force attacks can crack any passwords. Brute-force attacks try every possible combination of letters, numbers, and special characters until the right password is found. Brute-force attacks can take a long time. The speed is determined by the speed of the computer running the cracking program and the complexity of the password. Below I will show you how Brutus can be used against the same FTP server but this time using the brute-force option.

• Put in the target and port the same way you did for the dictionary attack. For the pass mode choose Brute-force and click range.

 

 

• If you have an idea of what the password might be, then you can choose the right option. For example if you know a site that requires your password to be a certain length then you’ll know what to put down as a minimum length thus narrowing down the end results and shortening the cracking process.

 

• I chose lowercase alpha which has the second smallest amount of combinations. Even at second smallest it came up with 321, 272,407 possible password combinations. Now you know why it can take so long to crack one password.