A brute force attack is a type of cyberattack that involves trying many possible combinations of passwords, encryption keys, or other data to gain unauthorized access to a system or resource. They rely on the trial and error method, rather than using logic or intelligence to guess the correct input.
A brute force attack could be performed manually by a human, for example trying every combination on a luggage lock, but these days the same sort of thing is done by software to guess your passwords.
While there are many ways to mitigate the risk of this rather unsophisticated attack such as limiting the number of login attempts, implementing captcha or multi-factor authentication, or encrypting data with complex keys to name a few, the main defense is a strong password.
But how long would it take a hacker to crack your password using only this method on an average computer? Find out below!
