password cracking

Password cracking is a technique to recover forgotten passwords, but also to gain unauthorized access to protected third-party computer systems.

Often, password cracking is about gaining access to a computer system with an unauthorized password and thus tapping into sensitive user data. There are various techniques for password cracking that are based on comparisons, word lists or algorithms. The techniques used for this purpose are also applied to spying on user data in networks. These include the brute force attack, the dictionary attack, the rainbow table, phishing and spidering.