Every day, millions of people input login credentials to access bank accounts, shop at their favorite retailers, and engage in a vast range of other online activities. But how many of those passwords are actually keeping them secure? How many people reuse passwords across several accounts and don’t take more than a few seconds to come up with them in the first place?
There are many ways cybercriminals can use victims’ login credentials against them, but one of the most common strategies is the appropriately-named brute force attack, in which hackers test as many different passwords as possible to force their way into an account. One way companies guard against this type of attack is by setting limits on the number of times a user can try a password before being locked out of an account. This is why cybercriminals often try a specific password across a wide range of accounts before moving on to the next one, which is known as password spraying.