Login Brute-Force Protection

Discussions center on preventing brute-force attacks via rate-limiting, throttling failed login attempts, account lockouts, and related security measures like error messages and username enumeration prevention.

📉 Falling 0.4x Security
3,035
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#4122
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
2
2008
5
2009
88
2010
60
2011
146
2012
170
2013
190
2014
173
2015
138
2016
173
2017
178
2018
171
2019
238
2020
161
2021
252
2022
302
2023
195
2024
216
2025
164
2026
13

Keywords

RDP DOS haveibeenpwned.com TOR ASN IP NOT C.f github.com TOTP login password brute logins account passwords attempts brute force force user

Sample Comments

euroclydon • Jan 21, 2010 • View on HN

Why not just lock out a user after n failed login attempts?

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 • Nov 25, 2020 • View on HN

This scenario is not realistic, as you can just lengthen time between subsequent login attempts per username.

pistle • Jun 26, 2016 • View on HN

Can someone school me in why we don't just throttle login attempts (each fail extends time to next attempt exponentially) and put an attempt cap that requires password reset?

durpkingOP • Jan 20, 2023 • View on HN

did you at least put a responsible error message for all people with failed logins to mitigate the issue?

greenyoda • May 2, 2018 • View on HN

A pretty common policy is to lock out an account after a few consecutive failed login attempts.

hynek • Jan 7, 2016 • View on HN

You should rate-limit your logins anyway lest you want to end like Apple & Fappening.

vntok • Jan 28, 2024 • View on HN

Rate-limit after x failed logins on either source IP, username and password. Just provide a realworld sidechannel escape hatch for legitimate users (ex: phone or email). Barely anyone will actually use it.

citizens • Aug 4, 2016 • View on HN

I imagine it would make it harder for bots to brute-force login credentials.

truted2 • Mar 8, 2021 • View on HN

Would this "fraud" detection be triggered by some unauthorized user trying their account password too many times or a more sophisticated attack?

sippeangelo • Oct 26, 2025 • View on HN

The answer should be that it's a privacy leak! Do you allow random actors to brute force your login?