Brute-Force & Password-Spraying Tool · Hacking Project

Demonstrate credential-based attack techniques and their detection signatures in an authorized environment.

**The problem**
Weak, reused, and default credentials remain a top breach root cause, and defenders must understand attacker credential-access techniques to build lockout, MFA, and detection controls. Password spraying in particular evades naive lockout policies by staying low-and-slow across many accounts. Without hands-on modeling, teams under-tune both prevention and detection.

**What you'll build**
Build an authorized, lab-scoped credential-attack framework supporting online brute-force and password-spraying against common protocols (HTTP forms, SSH, RDP-style services) with rate control, jitter, and lockout-aware pacing. Instrument it to emit the exact authentication telemetry defenders should alert on, closing the purple-team loop. Include safe defaults, target allow-lists, and full logging.

**Objective** — Demonstrate credential-based attack techniques and their detection signatures in an authorized environment.

**Expected outcome** — A configurable spraying/brute-force tool plus a companion detection ruleset and defensive hardening guide.

**Difficulty** — Intermediate — protocol handling and evasion pacing require care, but the core techniques are well documented.

**Primary category** — Penetration Testing; Secondary = IAM, Detection Engineering

**Security domains** — Primary = Red Team; Secondary = Purple Team, Blue Team, IAM, Penetration Testing

**Technical focus** — Online brute-force, Password spraying, Credential stuffing concepts, Rate limiting/jitter, Lockout evasion, Protocol authentication (HTTP/SSH), Wordlist/rule mutation, Auth telemetry generation

**Core technologies** — Languages: Python; Frameworks/Libraries: requests, paramiko, asyncio, threading; Security Tools: Hydra/Medusa (reference), Hashcat rules concepts, Burp Suite for HTTP flows; Cloud/Infra: isolated lab targets (DVWA, vulnerable SSH); AI/Data: optional password-candidate modeling; Databases: SQLite for attempt logging

**Where it's valued** — Penetration-testing firms, red teams, IAM/identity security teams, MSSPs, enterprise SOCs

**Careers it builds toward** — Penetration Tester, Red Team Operator, IAM Security Engineer, SOC Analyst (detection tuning)

**Framework alignment**
• MITRE ATT&CK: Credential Access — Brute Force (T1110), Password Guessing (T1110.001), Password Spraying (T1110.003), Credential Stuffing (T1110.004)
• NIST CSF 2.0: Protect (PR.AA — identity and authentication), Detect (DE.CM, DE.AE)
• OWASP: Web — Identification and Authentication Failures (A07:2021); API — Broken Authentication (API2:2023)
• CIS Controls v8: 5 (Account Management), 6 (Access Control Management), 8 (Audit Log Management)

**Innovation** — Existing Idea — the tooling replicates mature capabilities; value is pedagogical and in the paired detection artifacts. Scores: Innovation 4/10, Startup 3/10, Enterprise-Readiness 5/10, Patent = No.