Password cracking

Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system, typically, by repeatedly verifying 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), to gain unauthorized access to a system, or as a preventive measure by the system administrator to check for easily crackable passwords.

References

• 1. Philippe Oechslin: Making a Faster Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off. CRYPTO 2003: pp617–630
• 2. NIST Special Publication 800-63: Electronic Authentication Guideline