Brute force attack and dictionary attack
Brute force attack and dictionary attack are the password recovery methods that are commonly used. They are different although they serve to attain the same mission of key combinations in order to get a password. One of the notable differences between the tow is that Brute force attack uses many kinds of key combinations in order to a given key. Dictionary attack, on the other hand, makes use of known passwords to get the required password. The number of keys that can be used in the dictionary attack is limited whereas the Brute force attack makes use of big large combination of numbers. In the Brute force attack, the time that will take to get the password will depend on the strength of the password that was used while the time that it will take to recover a password in dictionary attack method will depend on the dictionary of common passwords kept.
Dictionary attack is faster when compared to Brute force attack although there is no possibility that the password will be cracked in the end. This is because the combinations that are tried depend on the wordlist that is found in the dictionary. On the other hand, Brute force attack will take time but the password will always be recovered if given time to finish its operations. This is because it tries to permute all the available keys to try a password. The problem is that if the key length is long, that means the time it will take to recover the password will also be long. The good thing is that the password will be recovered in the long run.
Comparing the two, the best option is that of Brute force attack. I prefer this option because there is a guarantee of recovering the password although in some cases where the key is long, it might take several years. The good thing is that there is always a guarantee that password will be recovered.
References
Cross, M., & Shinder, L. D. (2008). Scene of the cybercrime. New Jersey: Syngress.
Kim, D., & Solomon, M. (2010). Fundamentals of information systems security. Texas: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Moore, R. (2010). Cybercrime: Investigating high-technology computer crime. New York: Elsevier.
