There are number of approaches based on which the password hacking programs work. The password is either decrypted or guessed with the help of these approaches. There are three common approaches that are used by these password hacking programs. These include the Known Cipher text Attacks, Dictionary Attacks, Brute Force Attacks.
The algorithm that will be used by a password hacking system will depend on the design of the password system. Every program that is intended to hack is designed to defeat a specific type of password structure. The various password structures include Cisco router passwords, zip passwords, etc.
Known Cipher text Attacks
This type of attack uses cryptanalysis in order to determine the plaintext password from a cipher text password. If there is no known weakness of the password encryption algorithm then dictionary attack is used in order to guess the password. Brute force attack is also used to make wild guesses of the password.
Dictionary Attacks
These types of attack are based on exploiting the people’s tendency to have easy passwords. This type of attack will try every word in the dictionary to obtain the possible password. Manual lookup may take a long time, but the same type of attack initiated by a computer would be completed much faster. Advanced form of dictionary attacks include trying out various combinations or variations of common dictionary words. The most popular password variation is to replace o’s with zeroes and I’s with ones. Another popular combination used by the hackers is to use a combination of letters and numbers. For instance, all4one is a famous variation.
Brute Force Attacks
In this type of attack, if a dictionary fails to reveal a password, this is used to break the password. This simply tries every possible password in order to break the code. These types of attack take a longer time to execute and one must understand the fact that longer the password is more the time it would take to make a brutal attack. Hence, one has to make sure that the password is long enough in order to withstand a brute force attack.
