Hydra, a really useful tool for penetration testing.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Hydra in our organization to provide a penetration testing solution for several clients that need such a service. The tool is used in conjunction with some other penetration tools offered in Kali Linux virtual machines. The scope here is to test different client services with brute force (FTP, TLENE, SSH, etc.).
Pros
- One of most important thing is that Hydra's ability to perform HTTP post form attacks.
- The tool also can be used to attack a great number of protocols.
- The source code of the tool/software is also available for others (so it is not a closed source one).
- A good thing about this tool is also the support available and it also has a high ranking on GitHub (over 1000 stars).
Cons
- It is not a straightforward tool to use, it needs certain dependencies to be installed so it can function as intended by its creators. This is one of the most important steps that need to be done while configuring the tool as one needs.
- Sometimes the tool gives False Positives passwords.
- There are some issues in the functionality of the tool itself (like some bugs, for example affecting the running and hanging process after a number of tries), but most of them have a solution and there is big community support for the tool.
Likelihood to Recommend
One scenario that fits well Hydra's ability is to test the strength of Drupal usernames and passwords. So, as an example, if we have a Drupal site at some HTTP web address, we could use lots of methods in order to collect a list with some valid users. After we create the list and also the list of some possible passwords we can try to initiate a Hydra brute force attack. Hydra for example is not suited for finding the vulnerabilities of a host, for this other solutions can be used.
