A penetration tester is evaluating the security of a corporate client’s web application using federated access. Which of the following approaches has the least possibility of blocking the IP address of the tester’s machine?
A.
for user in $(cat users.txt); dofor pass in $(cat /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt); docurl -sq -XPOST https://example.com/login.asp -d " username=$user & password=$pass " | grep " Welcome " & & echo " OK: $user $pass " done; done
PenTest+ differentiates password spraying from brute-force attacks. Brute force (as shown in A, C, and D) rapidly tests many passwords per user, producing a high rate of failed logins that commonly triggers defensive controls such as rate limiting, account lockout policies, WAF/IDS alerts, and IP reputation blocks. This is especially true in federated authentication flows, where identity providers and reverse proxies log and correlate repeated failures.
Option B reflects a spraying approach that is designed to be low-and-slow and policy-aware. A spraying tool that supports building an execution plan and adding delays between authentication attempts reduces the likelihood of crossing thresholds that cause automated blocking. In PenTest+ terms, this aligns with conducting authentication testing in a controlled manner to avoid service disruption and to minimize detection while still validating whether weak or reused passwords exist.
Therefore, the spraying approach with built-in pacing and planning has the least likelihood of getting the tester’s IP blocked compared to high-volume brute-force loops or Hydra-style rapid attacks.
Contribute your Thoughts:
Chosen Answer:
This is a voting comment (?). You can switch to a simple comment. It is better to Upvote an existing comment if you don't have anything to add.
Submit