For cybercrime, private accounts protected by authentication keys are valuable sources of information. Email services, banking applications, e-commerce portals and social networks, for example, gain attention from attackers based on information that can be exploited in various types of fraud.
If passwords are not strong enough, several services can be hacked using cryptanalysis process. This is the function of brute force attack. The cracker tries to systematically discover all possible combinations of the access keys, until they can invade a private account. There are two ways to perform the attacks: manually or with automation – in the latter case, using tools that decrease the discovery time.
The brute force attack can also be used to invade corporate platforms, seeking access to private areas containing business data, which makes it even more dangerous. Therefore, the authentication process is critical to preserve and protect the use of authenticated applications.
Security tools address this type of attack with encryption, access parsing and authentication functions. However, it is always important to create strong passwords – long passwords with different types of characters: uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, symbols.
On the other hand, some techniques help administrators of authenticated platforms to avoid the brute force technique:
- Adopt Intrusion Prevention System: permanent monitoring of network traffic with an IPS service helps detecting intrusion attempts, blocking malicious actions.
- Apply authentication process with captcha: the longer and more diversified the token, the greater the difficulty to fraud it.
- Block IP after failed attempts: in case of several unsuccessful access attempts, define an additional authentication action – either email recovery or contact with the system administrator.
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