Introduction
I this post, you will learn what is THC Hydra and the mechanism. In this post, I am not teaching how to command. I have written a separate post on how to work in THC hydra. Check it out in the Hacking tools menu.
What is THC Hydra?
THC Hydra stands for “The hackers choice” Hydra. This a hacking tool, it is a very powerful password cracking tool. I think you may come across the john the ripper tool, even this tool is used for password cracking. The difference between John the ripper and the hacker choice hydra is John the ripper works offline and The hackers choice hydra works online.
The hackers choice Hydra wrote in c language and it is open-source software.
Also Read: What is John the Ripper?
Who can use THC Hydra?
Anyone can use The hackers choice Hydra. This tool is available in Windows and Linux and macOSX
How THC Hydra works
The hackers choice Hydra works by dictionary and brute-force attack. Many hackers will not do brute-force attacks because the user may get a warning and he/she may change the password.
This tool is very effective against some databases like LDAP, SMB, VNC, SSH. This tool works really very simple the hacker should just give the login page of the targeted user and the tool runs and finds the correct username and password.
Comparing to john the ripper this tool is quite powerful because some modern keywords are stored in the memory of the tool.
This tool is quite aggressive so, how to defend yourself from this kind of attack?
I came with three possible ways;
- Continueous monitoring
- MFA (Multi factor authentication)
- File level encrypeion or disk level encryption.
Also Read: What is Metasploit?
Conclusion
In summary, I personally use The hackers choice Hydra compared to other password cracking tools and even I recommend you to go with THC Hydra. Because it is easy to use and got lots of features.
Also Read: What is Nmap, my review on Nmap
Also Read: What is browser hijacking?
