Password Strength: Compound Words

Asked Oct 23 '16 at 10:32

Active Oct 23 '16 at 13:21

Viewed 516 times

I’m familiar with XKCD’s Correct Horse Battery Stable example but I am wondering about one aspect of password strength.

Dictionary words are an easy target for password crackers. If you compound a word, such as batteryhorse which clearly is not in the dictionary, do password crackers have an easier time of it than just by brute-forcing a 12-letter combination? In other words is it more or less crackable than, say, abcdefgjihk or qpwosugnelso?

For this question, I am leaving out other characters or longer passwords. I am just asking whether some cracking algorithms handle compound words better than brute force.

edited Oct 23 '16 at 13:21

Anders

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asked Oct 23 '16 at 10:32

Manngo

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This is a question if an attacker is an irrational moron or a calculating sharpie. – techraf Oct 23 '16 at 11:01
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@techraf The attacker is a piece of software. That makes it a calculating moron, I suppose. – Manngo Oct 23 '16 at 21:29
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A piece of software does not pay the electricity bill to run itself. – techraf Oct 23 '16 at 22:32

Password Strength: Compound Words

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