Category Archives: dictionary

Hackers Want Cambridge Dictionary to Change Their Definition

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Maybe it’s the silly season of high summer, or maybe a PR bunny at a cybersecurity company has simply hit the jackpot with a story syndicated by the Press Association, but the non-tech media has been earnestly talking about a call upon the Cambridge Dictionary to remove the word “illegal” from their definition of “Hacker”. The weighty tome from the famous British university lists the word as either “a person who is skilled in the use of computer systems, often one who illegally obtains access to private computer systems:” in its learners dictionary, or as “ …read more

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How does the attacker know what algorithm and salt to use in a dictionary attack?

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I am curious about password cracking methods like dictionary and brute force attacks. Nowadays passwords are stored as hashes and not plaintext on the server. Then how can the plaintext passwords in the dictionary be compared… Continue reading How does the attacker know what algorithm and salt to use in a dictionary attack?→

Is it still possible to run an online dictionary attack from a single machine, without anonymisation?

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This question concerns dictionary attacks conducted:

Over the Internet, using programs like THC Hydra
Via protocols such as HTTP, FTP and SMTP

I believe I’m right in thinking that: a) due to the sophisticated layers of security they te… Continue reading Is it still possible to run an online dictionary attack from a single machine, without anonymisation?→