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

an 8-letter password with only letters (upper+lower case) would have 52^8 combinations.

an 8-letter password with letters+numbers has 62^8 combinations.

They have to brute force 100 million more combinations of letters+numbers.

A lot of brute-force attacks are just using dictionary words. But going from ‘password’ to ‘p4ssw0rd’, they must have a lot more combinations to try.