Password hacking - how to prevent?

Hey community,

After reading this https://hackernoon.com/20-hours-18-and-11-million-passwords-cracked-c4513f61fdb1

I thought i should share it with all of you and maybe find a solution to this potential problem.

My questions are:

Can this brute force attack be stopped?

If so how?

What is the best defense to prevent such an attack?

Also can a rate limiter prevent this penetration in the database?

Thanks and hope to hear your points of view on this.