CompTIA Security+ (SY0-601) Practice Exam #2

A cybersecurity analyst notices that an attacker is trying to crack the WPS pin associated with a wireless printer. The device logs show that the attacker tried 00000000, 00000001, 00000002 and continued to increment by 1 number each time until they found the correct PIN of 13252342. Which of the following type of password cracking was being performed by the attacker?

A. Hybrid

B. Rainbow table

C. Brute-force

D. Dictionary

Brute-force

Explanation
OBJ-1.2: A brute-force attack consists of an attacker submitting many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. In a traditional brute-force attack, the passcode or password is incrementally increased by one letter/number each time until the right passcode/password is found. A dictionary attack is a technique for defeating a cipher or authentication mechanism by trying to determine its decryption key or passphrase by trying hundreds or sometimes millions of likely possibilities, such as words in a dictionary. A rainbow table is a precomputed list of possible hashes used when trying to speed up the process of password cracking. A hybrid password cracking attack combines the use of a brute-force attack with a dictionary attack by using words from the dictionary's list as the basis for the brute-force attack. For example, if the diction had the word Jason in it, the hybrid attack might try Jason123, Jason!@#, and J@$0n as possible combinations based on the word Jason.