Originally by: Blacksquirrel

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How much time is needed to crack a password by brute-force?

If the password cannot be guessed and is not found in a dictionary, the cracker has to try a brute-force attack. When brute-forcing, the time to crack the password depends on the amount of possible passwords that the cracker has to try. The amount of possible passwords increases with password length and with increasing diversity of characters being used (complexity).

LetÆs take the scenario of a cracker trying 15 million passwords per second. This is currently the maximum speed being claimed by password cracker vendors. You need a pretty fast computer to achieve this. The following table shows the computed time to crack a password with 15 million tries per second. Notice the incredible increase in time to try all possible combinations when password length and complexity increase.

length: 4, complexity: a-z==> less than 1 second

length: 4, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9 + symbols==> 4.8 seconds

length: 5, complexity: a-zA-Z==> 25 seconds

length: 6, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9==> 1 hour

length: 6, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9 + symbols==> 11 hours

length: 7, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9 + symbols==> 6 weeks

length: 8, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9==> 5 months

length: 8, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9 + symbols==> 10 years

length: 9, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9 + symbols==> 1000 years

length: 10, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9==> 1700 years

length: 10, complexity: a-zA-Z0-9 + symbols==> 91800 years

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Yoink. Not my work of course. However there is a little caveat in win XP the way the hashing works depending upon the length will break the hashing apart making it slightly easier to run the numbers as it were.

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Originally by: Dr Fighter

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"how do you know when youve had a repro accident"

Theres modules missing and morphite in your mineral pile.

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