An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is generating alarms that a user account has over 100 failed login attempts per minute. A sniffer is placed on the network, and a variety of passwords for that user

The correct answer is A. A dictionary attack. A dictionary attack is a type of brute-force attack that attempts to guess a user's password by trying a large number of possible words or phrases, often derived from a dictionary or a list of commonly used passwords. A dictionary attack can be detected by an Intrusion Detection

Submitted by kevin_r· Mar 5, 2026Security Operations

Question

An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is generating alarms that a user account has over 100 failed login attempts per minute. A sniffer is placed on the network, and a variety of passwords for that user are noted. Which of the following is MOST likely occurring?

Options

AA dictionary attack
BA Denial of Service (DoS) attack
CA spoofing attack
DA backdoor installation

How the community answered

(32 responses)

A
75% (24)
B
3% (1)
C
16% (5)
D
6% (2)

Explanation

A dictionary attack is a type of brute-force attack that attempts to guess a user's password by trying a large number of possible words or phrases, often derived from a dictionary or a list of commonly used passwords. A dictionary attack can be detected by an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) if it generates a high number of failed login attempts per minute, as well as a variety of passwords for the same user. A sniffer can capture the network traffic and reveal the passwords being tried by the attacker.

Topics

#dictionary attack#intrusion detection#password attacks#incident analysis

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