Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v10) — Question 64

Which method of password cracking takes the most time and effort?

Answer options

• A. Shoulder surfing
• B. Brute force
• C. Dictionary attack
• D. Rainbow tables

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Brute force is the most time-consuming method of cracking passwords as it involves systematically trying every possible combination until the correct one is found. In contrast, shoulder surfing is a passive observation technique, dictionary attacks use a predefined list of likely passwords, and rainbow tables leverage precomputed hashes, all of which are generally faster than brute force.