Brute-Force Attack Explained & Explored

Did your Business website faced any attack latterly?
Have you gone through any serious backdrop for some time?

n the world full of Hackers, Cybercrimes who’re always in search of some new tricks to disturb your business sites online. But here with this article, we will learn about the brute-force attack.

What is Brute-Force Attack?

A brute force attack is a trial-and-error method used to obtain information such as a user password / User PIN Code. Automated software is used to generate a large number of consecutive guesses to the value of the desired data.

The Goal of a Brute-Force attacker

Once the hacker makes a successful login attempt, what’s next? Explore, here are some main tasks:

• Stealing or exposing the user’s personal information found inside online accounts.
• Harvesting sets of credentials for sale to third parties.
• Posing as account owners to spread fake content or phishing links.
• Stealing system resources for use in other activities
• Spreading malware or spam content or redirecting domains to malicious content

Brute Force Attack Prevention Techniques

There are many methods to prevent Brute force Attacks

The most used method is a strong password policy. Each server should enforce the use of strong passwords and require frequent password changes.

The Strong Password policy should include:

1. Reach the minimum password length ( 7 characters).
2. Should use both upper and lower case letters.
3. Make sure to include numeric characters.
4. Include some special characters like @, #, $, &, %, etc.

Ways to prevent Brute force attack:

1. Use Captcha: The single requirement to enter a word or the number of cats on a generated image is highly effective against bots, even though hackers have started using optical character recognition tools to get past this safety mechanism.
2. Two Factor Authentication: It is considered by many the first line of defense against brute-force attacks. Implementing such a solution greatly reduces the risk of a potential data breach. NOTE: Two-Factor authentication is very effective against many types of attacks, including keylogger attacks.
3. Unique login URL’s: Create a unique login URL for different user groups. This practicemay not stop a brute force attack but introducing that additional variable will make things a little bit more difficult for the attacker.
4. Make the root user inaccessible via SSH: SSH Brute force attempts are often carried out on the root user of a server. Make sure to make the root inaccessible via SSH by editing the sshd_config file.
5. Monitor Server Logs: Be sure to analyze your log files diligently. Admins are known that log files are essential for maintaining a system.

Other Practices:

• Change your passwords often.
• Ensure you create unique passwords for each account.
• Don’t share your credentials via insecure channels.
• Add a few rules in the .htaccess file to harden the security of your website.

Conclusion Brute-force attacks are quite easy and simple to understand, but difficult to protect your website against them, as this cyber attacks typically rely on weak passwords and careless of network administration. Executing countermeasures can help the least slowing down the attackers.