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

number of possible characters x number of characters in string at its most basic form. imagine you only had 3 characters to choose from, and your password is only 3 characters long. that’s 3×3 right – there are 9 possible combinations. every time you add a character you make the number of possible incorrect solutions higher, and therefore more ‘expensive’ to crack. Any type of character is fine, an effective way to brute force is to run through a dictionary of terms, people are lazy and like words, drop a number in there and all of a sudden your word is no longer in a dictionary.