Question 1

What is a brute force attack?

Accepted Answer

A brute force attack systematically tries every possible password or credential combination until the correct one is found. Dictionary attacks are a variant that tries common passwords first. Without rate limiting, attackers can try thousands of passwords per second.

Question 2

How do I protect against brute force?

Accepted Answer

Implement rate limiting (e.g. 5 attempts per minute), progressive delays or account lockout after failed attempts, CAPTCHA after repeated failures, and multi-factor authentication. Use bcrypt or Argon2 for password hashing to make each attempt computationally expensive.

Brute Force Attack

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