Why is a password with both numbers and letters stronger than one with only letters? Attackers will include numbers in their brute force attempts anyway, so how does it make a difference?

Question

Why is a password with both numbers and letters stronger than one with only letters? Attackers will include numbers in their brute force attempts anyway, so how does it make a difference?

In: Technology

Answer 1

It adds more combinations.

A four character password with only lowercase letters has 26x26x26x26=456,976 possible combinations.

A four character password with lowercase letters or numbers is 36x36x36x36=1,679,616 combinations.