Dictionary Attack

nounverified·updated May 9, 2026

GlossaryL1 — what DictionaryL2 — how used ThesaurusL3 — relations Universaleverything

Discovery of authenticators by encrypting likely authenticators and comparing the actual encrypted authenticator with the newly encrypted possible authenticators.

MWEFederal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) IT Examination Handbook Infobase, Glossary

Senses

1 more sense beyond the canonical

SANS Glossary of Security Terms

An attack that tries all of the phrases or words in a dictionary, trying to crack a password or key. A dictionary attack uses a predefined list of words compared to a brute force attack that tries all possible combinations.

Classifications

per-axis with provenance

Entity Type

Threat95%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5

?unassignedlast reviewed —

Sensitivity

unclassified

Information Class

unclassified

Variants

3 surface forms

plural: Dictionary Attacks
possessive: Dictionary Attack's
pluralpossessive: Dictionary Attacks'

Continue to:Dictionary →How is this term used per framework?Thesaurus →How does this term relate to other terms?Universal →Everything in one page.