What characterizes a brute force attack?

A brute force attack is characterized by its method of attempting to gain unauthorized access to systems, applications, or data by systematically trying all possible password combinations until the correct one is found. This technique is based on the application's password length and complexity; the more complex the password, the longer the process may take. Since brute force attacks do not utilize any intelligent guessing or information about user behavior, they rely purely on computing power and time to exhaust all possible combinations.

While some options relate to security practices, they do not describe the nature of brute force attacks. For instance, social manipulation techniques pertain to social engineering attacks, which involve tricking users into revealing information or credentials. Hardware security tokens provide an additional security layer through physical devices that generate authentication codes, which is unrelated to the password guessing technique of brute force attacks. Targeting specific network protocols refers to methods that exploit vulnerabilities in communication protocols rather than attempting to guess credentials. Thus, the defining characteristic of a brute force attack is its comprehensive attempt at cracking passwords through exhaustive guessing.