Brute force attack facts for kids
A brute force attack is a way to break secret codes. It means trying out every possible password or key until the correct one is found. Imagine trying every single lock combination until the door opens! Computers are used for this because they can try many possibilities very quickly. If successful, this attack can unlock a secret message.
How Brute Force Attacks Work
People who design secret codes know about brute force attacks. They try to make their codes very hard for computers to break. A code is considered "broken" if someone finds a faster way to unlock it than a brute force attack.
The length of a secret key or password is very important. A longer key makes a brute force attack much harder. It's like having a lock with millions of combinations instead of just a few. Sometimes, people make data harder to understand before they even encrypt it. This also makes brute force attacks less effective.
Brute force attacks can sometimes be used with other methods, like a dictionary attack. A dictionary attack tries common words and phrases first.
For many common secret codes, a key that is 128 bits long is considered very safe from today's computers. Keys of 192 or 256 bits are thought to be safe even from future super-fast computers called quantum computers. Some older codes, like the DES, used shorter keys. This made them easier to break with a brute force attack.
Images for kids
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Modern GPUs are great at the repeated tasks needed for breaking passwords.
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A single COPACOBANA board has 6 Xilinx Spartans. A cluster uses 20 of these boards.
See also
In Spanish: Ataque de fuerza bruta para niños
