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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Brute-force attack

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, brute-force attack means: An attack that tries a huge number of passwords or keys one after another, usually automatically, until the right one is found.

In Turkish: kaba kuvvet saldırısı, deneme yanılma saldırısı

How it is used

Usually seen in logs as many failed logins from one source. Related forms are password spraying (one common password tried against many accounts) and credential stuffing (reusing leaked username and password pairs). Account lockout and MFA are typical defences.

Example sentences

  1. The SIEM flagged a brute-force attack against the VPN login page.

  2. Account lockout stopped the brute-force attack after five failed attempts.

Common collocations

  • brute-force login attempts
  • password spraying
  • credential stuffing
  • account lockout
  • passwordA secret string of characters that a person types to prove their identity and log in to an account, device or system.
  • credentialsThe details that prove who a user is and let them log in, most often a username and password, but also keys, tokens and certificates.
  • multi-factor authenticationA login method that asks for two or more different kinds of proof, such as a password plus a code from a phone, before granting access.
  • logA record of events, messages and errors that a program writes while it runs, used later to understand what happened. Also a verb: to log an error.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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