

These tools help prevent network security threats by storing and managing users' credentials. With stronger passwords, cybercriminals would find it hard to guess the patterns and calculate hashes.īusinesses and organizations with websites can also use password managers. Strong passwords contain a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Their websites must encourage customers or individual users to create strong passwords. It is important for businesses with websites to take steps to prevent password mask attacks. They only need to crack enough passwords to get an initial foothold on the website and go deeper into their attack. These cybercriminals can calculate hashes for common words and often-used combinations.Ĭybercriminals don't crack each password within the data set they obtained from a website. They will put the character combinations into a hashing function and wait until they get valid hits or until it creates a hash that matches yours. If cybercriminals get a hold of password hashes from a site, they can start a password mask attack. Instead, they will get the encrypted "hash" that the algorithm had created. So, if attackers hack a website, they won't be able to access your password as is. Hashing improves the security of your password. Hashing uses an encryption algorithm to turn passwords and other data into a string of letters and numbers. Instead, they use a process called hashing.

Websites and online apps do not store their users' passwords verbatim. They will then start cracking a subset of your password's format or entire length. Threat actors will use information about your password creation behavior, including yourĬomposition patterns. Knowing this pattern allows them to skip character combinations that are not necessary. With a mask attack, cybercriminals check passwords for a specific pattern. While aĬonventional brute-force attack tries to guess your password by entering every possible letter, number, and symbol combination, a mask attack is more targeted and takes less time. Through password mass attacks, cyber threat actors no longer have to spend a long time trying to guess your online credentials.Ī password mask attack is a technique cybercriminals use to crack passwords. Hackers and cybercriminals have found a way to crack passwords and hijack emails, bank accounts, social media pages, and other digital real estate. Having a password for online accounts is not enough protection.
