cryptography - attacks

See also: Security | Cracker | Hard Disk Encryption

Attacks used against encryption. Part of the science of Cryptography. Like any security system, it is important to know what tools a thief has in order to make a stronger lock.

• Brute Force Trying all possible keys; a systematic search to find the decryption key. This can take a prohibitively long time.

• Dictionary Attack - Trying all the words in the dictionary to guess a password. This is an effective attack as most people use simple words their password. Often, even if a dictionary attack doesn't work on one user, if an attacker has access to many 100+ users, he can likely get access to at least one using this technique.

• Math Attack - Trying to solve the math problem itself something historically, done during War time but no longer feasible due to advances in encryption complexity. Except, however, given a theoretical leap in computing power such as with Quantum Computing or an advance in the ability to factor several multiplied prime numbers. A major eventual weakness in mathematical (whether public-key or symmetric) cryptography that could someday be solved perhaps years or hundreds of years from now.

• Key-Logging Attack - any item or software that captures user-input such as typed-in passwords, e-mail messages, or otherwise. This often makes cryptography useless by either gaining the encrypted document as it is typed or the password used to encrypt it.

• Man-In-The-Middle Attack - someone between you and your connection works as a intermediary, listening in on your communications and possibly modifying them.

• Rubber Hose Attack - referring to the human vulnerability via social, litigation, or physical, stress, that people will reveal the method to access hidden information.

• Traffic Analysis Attack - in the absence of a way to decipher a given method of encryption, a method to see what type of information is being transferred therefore infer what is being communicated (chat, e-mail, data).

• Undelete Attack - finding deleted but still-present files on a computer.

This article is based on a public domain infoAnarchy article: Cryptography/Attacks

iA