Nov 20, 2014
Thanks to recent events involving certain celebrities' stolen pictures, "brute-force attack" is now one of the hot buzz words making its rounds. As an IT professional - do you know what a brute force attack is, how to spot one when it happens, and how to prevent it? A brute-force attack is, simply, an attack on a username, password, etc. that systematically checks all possible combinations until the correct one is found. Scripts are usually used in these attacks to automate the process of arriving at the correct username/password combination. This is why time is of the essence when it comes to detecting and stopping a brute force attack – the more time the attacker has, the more passwords can be tried. Brute force attacks are one of the few hacks detectable by their volume, rather than their type. In your web (or proprietary app) logs, you'll usually see a crazy amount of failed login attempts, usually originating from the same IP address. You might even see the same accoun