Virtual Lab Passphrase

Question

The portion of the lab where we were looking for the boneless passphrase seemed like it was out of a 2000s hacking scene from a movie. Does anyone know what it was actually doing?

Answer 1

I think you're talking about what's known as a dictionary attack.

The basic idea is to try a bunch of common words or combinations of common words, since many people choose weak passwords, so it might be guessable that way, even if it's not feasible to try all possible passwords.

Answer 2

It seemed like it had a list of possible words/phrases that it was checking off until it got to the right one. Definitely wasn't just a set of random letters.