SECAI Core · phase 11 of 15
Brute force attack
A type of password attack where an attacker uses an application to exhaustively try every possible alphanumeric combination to crack encrypted passwords.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- A brute force attack tries every possible combination of characters until a password or key is found. It relies on raw computing power and the target not locking the attacker out.
- Example
- An attacker points a cracking tool at a leaked database of hashed admin passwords for an ML platform, cycling through billions of guesses per second on rented GPUs.
- Why it matters
- AI infrastructure leans on GPUs, and so do password crackers. Long passphrases, strong hashing, rate limiting, and MFA turn exhaustive guessing from a weekend job into a geological one.
- Hook
- Every key on the ring, one after another, until the door opens.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 11: Threat Landscape: Attack Vectors and Adversarial Techniques
With defences named, learn what they must defend against — the full catalogue of attack techniques targeting AI systems, their inputs, outputs, training pipelines, and supply chains.
