wardialer
wardialer
(security)1. carrier scanner
2. A program which attempts to break a password of knownlength by iterating thru all possible combinations ofcharacters that could make up that password.
This approach is not feasable for cracking most passwordsthese days. However, as late as the mid-1980s, somelong-distance companies required only very short numericaccess codes (e.g. five digits) to verify the identity oftheir customers. Wardialers were created which would, runningunattended, call up long-distance providers' local connectnumbers and iteratively try possible access codes. Codeswhich worked were logged for later illicit use.
These wardialers had a high success rate because of the smallrange of possibilities to iterate through, e.g. 10000 for afive digit access code, compared to hundreds of trillions ofcombinations for an eight-character alphanumeric code.
Long-distance providers soon required longer passwords andtook advantage of technology for rapidly tracing the phonenumbers that wardialers were being run from, such that runningwardialers became pointless and dangerous.