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Security Operations · Foundational

Dictionary Attack

A password attack that tries words from a list of common passwords and dictionary terms.

Definition

Dictionary attacks are faster than pure brute force because they focus on likely choices, often with mangling rules (adding numbers, substitutions). Wordlists such as rockyou.txt derive from previous breaches. Banned-password lists and MFA mitigate them.

Example

hashcat -a 0 hashes.txt rockyou.txt -r best64.rule

Exam tip

Dictionary attacks exploit predictable human password choices; enforcing a banned password list helps.

Don't confuse it with

Related terms