wardialer
<security> Almost certainly a shortened version of "WarGames dialer",
from the film WarGames.
1. carrier scanner
2. A program which attempts to break a password of known length by iterating
thru all possible combinations of characters that could make up that password.
This approach is not feasable for cracking most passwords these days. However,
as late as the mid-1980s, some long-distance companies required only very short
numeric access codes (e.g. five digits) to verify the identity of their
customers. Wardialers were created which would, running unattended, call up
long-distance providers' local connect numbers and iteratively try possible
access codes. Codes which worked were logged for later illicit use.
These wardialers had a high success rate because of the small range of
possibilities to iterate through, e.g. 10000 for a five digit access code,
compared to hundreds of trillions of combinations for an eight-character
alphanumeric code.
Long-distance providers soon required longer passwords and took advantage of
technology for rapidly tracing the phone numbers that wardialers were being run
from, such that running wardialers became pointless and dangerous.
(1997-03-16)
Nearby terms:
warchalk « Ward Christensen « Ward Cunnigham «
wardialer
» wardriving » -ware » warez
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