Wouldn't this have been easier 25 years ago though? I mean 25 years ago, this form of attack had the following things going for it:

#1. People who weren't trained in Computers (Which wasn't many, this would have been 1984) used passwords they could remember, and didn't think much about "Haxors".

#2. CPUs 25 years ago were slow enough that you could WATCH this. Today, with CPUs more than 20x the speed of the average system back then, and of course, Ethernet being more than a few MBs a second, and most people using a WAY slower net connection.... Wouldn't it have been easier then? I mean back then, a 1MHz system, you could almost use a Stop Watch to do this lol. Today it would be a difference in like, Milliseconds.

It is interesting though. I haven't used much in my days for password cracking... Being a person who think Social Engineering is still very viable, and someone who also uses password crackers and sniffers for those non-encrypted ones, and basically nothing else, I've used what works when I needed to.

When I first started using Linux, I tried cracking my passwords, but it rarely got far. I've been pretty good about that. Ever since my VERY first password EVER back in September of 1999, which was "azsxdc". I know, it sucks, and it's easy, but, it wasn't a word, and I was using a Computer seriously for the very first time.