A student confuses online password guessing against a live municipal AP with offline handshake cracking. What distinction should stick?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Online guessing knocks on the AP’s door over and over—noisy and lockout-friendly. Offline cracking works the captured handshake on your own box like picking a photographed lock at the kitchen table. Same passphrase goal, totally different traffic and risk profile.
Full Explanation
Online passphrase attempts interact repeatedly with the live access point or authentication path, creating noise, delay, and potential lockouts. Offline WPA-PSK attacks test candidates against previously captured handshake or related hash material on the assessor’s systems without submitting each guess to the AP. Conflating the two leads to poor tool choices and RoE mistakes. OSWP-style Personal recovery emphasis is predominantly the offline capture-then-test class.