Efficient brute-forcing

A brute-force attack typically involves a barrage of requests, or guesses, to gain access or reveal information that may be otherwise hidden. We may brute-force a login form on an administrative panel in order to look for commonly used passwords or usernames. We may also brute-force a web application's root directory looking for common misconfiguration and misplaced sensitive files.

Many successful engagements were made so by weak credentials or application misconfiguration. Brute-forcing can help to reveal information that may have been obscured, or can grant access to a database because the developer forgot to change the default credentials.

There are obvious challenges to brute-forcing. Primarily, it is time-consuming and can be very noisy. Brute-forcing a web service, for example, with the infamous rockyou.txt wordlist will no doubt wake up your friendly neighborhood security operations center (SOC) analyst and may put an end to your activities early...