Popular Tools for Brute-force Attacks [Updated for 2020]

The brute force attack is still one of the most popular password-cracking methods. Nevertheless, it is not just for password cracking. Brute force attacks can also be used to discover hidden pages and content in a web application. This attack is basically “a hit and try” until you succeed. This attack sometimes takes longer, but its success rate is higher. 

In this article, I will try to explain brute force attacks and popular tools used in different scenarios for performing brute force attacks to get desired results.

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What is a brute force attack?

A brute force attack when an attacker uses a set of predefined values to attack a target and analyze the response until he succeeds. Success depends on the set of predefined values. If it is larger, it will take more time, but there is a better probability of success. 

The most common and easiest to understand example of the brute force attack is the dictionary attack to crack passwords. In this, the attacker uses a password dictionary that contains millions of words that can be used as a password. The attacker tries these passwords one by one for authentication. If this dictionary contains the correct password, the attacker will succeed.

In a traditional brute force attack, the attacker just tries the combination of letters and numbers to generate a password sequentially. However, this traditional technique will take longer when the password is long enough. These attacks can take several minutes to several hours or several years, depending on the system used and length of password.

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