Password Attacks 101: Brute Force, Guessing, and Cracking Explained

Your password is the 🔑 to your digital front door — and attackers have more tricks than you think to jiggle the lock. They don’t need Hollywood hacking powers. They rely on predictable human behaviour, weak hashing, and automation.

This isn’t about memorising definitions. This is about knowing how the attacks really happen and what survival skills small businesses can use today.

🚨 How Attackers Slide In...

1. Credential Stuffing

• The move: Attackers recycle username/password combos from breaches and spray them on other sites.

• Why it works: Password reuse. Automation. Laziness.

• Survival skill: Use MFA everywhere. Block known breached creds. Rate limit login attempts.

2. Brute Force Attacks

• The move: Automated tools try every possible combination.

• Two flavours:

  • Online brute force → against live login pages (slowed by lockouts).

  • Offline brute force → against stolen password hashes (think "rainbow tables" where password hashes are stored - it is much faster).

• Survival skill: Long passphrases, account lockouts, hardened hashing (bcrypt, Argon2).

3. Dictionary & Password Spraying

• The move: Attackers cycle through the “greatest hits” of weak passwords (Password123, Summer2024!).

• Survival skill: Block common passwords. MFA. Progressive login throttling.

4. Rainbow Tables & Hash Cracking

• The move: Precomputed hash tables speed up reversing weakly hashed passwords.

• Survival skill: Unique salts + memory-hard hashing. Never trust MD5 or unsalted SHA1.

5. Phishing & Social Engineering

• The move: Fake logins, scam emails, or impersonation calls to trick people into handing over credentials.

• Survival skill: User training, anti-phishing tools, MFA (but watch out for MFA fatigue).

6. Keyloggers & Malware

• The move: Malicious software records your keystrokes and ships them to the attacker.

• Survival skill: Endpoint protection, patching, and hardware MFA keys that resist keylogging.

7. Man-in-the-Middle (MitM)

• The move: Intercepting passwords in transit (rare on HTTPS, more common on dodgy Wi-Fi).

• Survival skill: Enforce HTTPS, use HSTS, VPNs, and avoid shady public Wi-Fi.

8. Shoulder Surfing & Sticky Notes

• The move: Literally watching someone type their password — or finding it written down.

• Survival skill: Password managers, privacy filters, no sticky-notes-on-the-monitor culture.

9. Pass-the-Hash & Token Theft

• The move: Attackers reuse tokens or password hashes to impersonate users.

• Survival skill: Limit lateral movement, enforce session controls, and harden endpoints.

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🛡️ Why MFA Saves You

Even if attackers snag your password, MFA can stop them cold.

• SMS codes = basic, but better than nothing.

• Authenticator apps = stronger.

• Hardware security keys = gold standard.

  
  

✅ The ST3MTECH Survival Checklist

• Stop reusing passwords.

• Use a password manager to generate and store strong ones.

• Turn on MFA everywhere.

• Train your staff to spot phishing.

• Harden your systems with modern hashing algorithms.

Need more survival strategies? Don't wait, contact ST3MTech today!!

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