eli5: How does adding numbers or symbols to a password make it more secure? If those characters are already in the list of options a hacker has to try then wouldn’t having them or not be irrelevant?

Question

A hacker still has to try every combination when brute-forcing a password, don’t they? If my password was long enough why wouldn’t any type of characters be fine?

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Best answer given by /r/danceswithsteers below: [https://xkcd.com/936/](https://xkcd.com/936/)

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Pick a number from 1-100.
Your pretty limited in your options if you only use digits, as you have 10*10 choices as each digit can only be a number.

If you replace the numbers with letters, you have 26*26 (676) options (a-z..a-z).

If you use numbers and letters, you have 36*36 (1296) options.

If you add just the symbols you can get with shift and numbers, you get 46*46, 2116.

Each additional character/option increases the number of possible passwords by a significant amount.

Keep in mind that’s only referring to 2 character passwords.