If you brute force using single iterations of all possible combinations sure. But people don’t do that. They use fully readable passwords and letter substitutions. This makes dictionary attacks viable. There are a known number of readable words and phonetic combinations that are significantly easier to brute force. And also the vast majority of numbers are also guessable because most numbers are dates. Series of 2 or 4 or 8 numbers to form important dates means there are lots of numbers between 1940-2024. People don’t usually unconditionally random alphanumeric passwords. Therefore peoples passwords will never be fully secure against sufficiently advanced brute force methods.
I originally included the words “assuming random” to the post. Why I removed it? I guess for dramatic effect.
You are correct.
Permutations of dictionary words are relatively trivial for a decent program.
But, increasing the length and the addition of special characters adds a nontrivial exponential increase in time, wouldn’t it?
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If you brute force using single iterations of all possible combinations sure. But people don’t do that. They use fully readable passwords and letter substitutions. This makes dictionary attacks viable. There are a known number of readable words and phonetic combinations that are significantly easier to brute force. And also the vast majority of numbers are also guessable because most numbers are dates. Series of 2 or 4 or 8 numbers to form important dates means there are lots of numbers between 1940-2024. People don’t usually unconditionally random alphanumeric passwords. Therefore peoples passwords will never be fully secure against sufficiently advanced brute force methods.
I originally included the words “assuming random” to the post. Why I removed it? I guess for dramatic effect. You are correct. Permutations of dictionary words are relatively trivial for a decent program. But, increasing the length and the addition of special characters adds a nontrivial exponential increase in time, wouldn’t it?