Password Cracking is the process of recovering passwords from data that have been stored in or transmitted by a computer system. A common approach (brute-force attack) is to repeatedly try guesses for the password.
The purpose of password cracking might be to help a user recover a forgotten password (though installing an entirely new password is less of a security risk, but involves System Administration privileges), to gain unauthorized access to a system, or as a preventive measure by System Administrators to check for easily crackable passwords. On a file-by-file basis, password cracking is utilized to gain access to digital evidence for which a judge has allowed access but the particular file's access is restricted.
The purpose of password cracking might be to help a user recover a forgotten password (though installing an entirely new password is less of a security risk, but involves System Administration privileges), to gain unauthorized access to a system, or as a preventive measure by System Administrators to check for easily crackable passwords. On a file-by-file basis, password cracking is utilized to gain access to digital evidence for which a judge has allowed access but the particular file's access is restricted.
computer programmers have been trying to create algorithms for password cracking in less time. Most of the password cracking tools try to login with every possible combination of words. If login is successful, it means the password was found. If the password is strong enough with a combination of numbers, characters and special characters, this cracking method may take hours to weeks or months. A few password cracking tools use a dictionary that contains passwords. These tools are totally dependent on the dictionary, so success rate is lower.
