HOW TO CRACK PASSWORD | TYPES OF PASSWORD CRACKING TECHNIQUE

what is password cracking?

security analysts and experts suggest different approaches when it comes to password cracking the attack selection depends on the hashing algorithm used and the speed of the hash calculation.

the time that will take for the attack to compute and try one password.usually passwords have an expiry date therefore an attack that takes too much time will not be considered.

the amount of resources that the attacker has in the case of organised crime and industrial espionage, the attacker might have the ability to use multiple processors,data centers or botnets for the attacker.


there are two main categories of password cracking techniques : online and offline attacks.

online attacks are attacks that are performed on a live host or system be either using exhaustive search (brute-force) or word list  attack again a login form,session,or any type of authentication technique used. online attacks are not as popular as offline attacks because they are often not possible. various protection mechanism like captcha images and maximum unsuccessful authentication attempts are employed that made the online attacks difficult and dangerous to realize. 
sometime,it is still possible to launch online attacks if the security measures above can be by passed, there is sufficient bandwidth to perform the attacks, and other contributing factors make it possible such as IDS evasion.

types of password cracking technique

1)google search hash attack and free public hash database:

this attack is done by simply searching for the password hash in google.many passwords can be recovered this way because there are various lists and databases online that store passwords and their corresponding hashes.this attack is very simple ans works well with all commonly used passwords such as ''admin' ,"1234" etc. to prove this concept,we search google for the MD5 hash google gives the result.

2)brute-force attacks:

a brute-force attacks performs and exhaustive search on the hash or hashes by calculating the hash of each and every string combination for  a chosen character set and string length. the calculate hashes compared with the hashes to be recovered until a match is found or the attack is finished.for example a brute-force attack for all string up to 8 lowercase characters in the English language would start with  'aaaaaaaa" to"zzzzzzzz" 

A complete brute-force attack that includes all letters, number,special can in theory guarantee a 100% success rate.


3)dictionary attack:

dictionaries are raw text files consisting of one word of phase per line.each line is a candidate match where each hash is computed and compared to the hashes to be recovered. the difference between a dictionary and a brute-force attack is that a dictionary contains a list of probable matches rather than all possible sting combinations. A dictionary needs to be well optimized otherwise if it includes any string combinations it risks becoming a brute-force attack and lose its efficiency therefore dictionaries often include known popular password.