Wörterbuchangriff
Dictionary Attack
Wörterbuchangriff
A dictionary attack guesses passwords by specifically trying a list of likely terms — real words, names, common patterns and known leaked passwords — instead of blindly trying all combinations. It is the smarter, faster relative of the pure brute-force attack. Against human-chosen passwords it is especially successful.
History & facts. People rarely choose passwords randomly; they take words, names, years and predictable variations. This is exactly what the dictionary attack exploits: it works through a curated list, often fed from earlier data leaks, complemented by typical variations (a number at the end, letter substitution). This finds weak passwords orders of magnitude faster than trying all characters. Closely related is credential stuffing with credentials leaked elsewhere.
Outlook & recommendation. The defence largely coincides with that against brute force: long, random and unique passwords (ideally via a password manager), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) as the decisive second hurdle, locking after failed attempts and secure, slow hashing with salt. Additionally sensible is to check new passwords against lists of known leaked passwords and reject such ones — this leads the dictionary attack to nothing from the outset.