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

The official advice by security experts now states that a longer passphrase with no special characters is better than a shorter password with special characters

A passphrase is a series of words that are space seperated that will not be easily guessed with knowledge about its owner (for example: “pigeon fridge ectoplasm building”)

This advice is supported by academic research published in 2015 (Panferov, 2015)

Some standards bodies are currently trying to encourage all services to allow passwords of up to 64 characters in length