Passwords and Combination Locks

Tweet

Today in class we were talking about determining the number of possible outcomes in Compound Events. Two of the examples we used were combination locks and computer passwords. Computer passwords and combination locks have a lot in common. The purpose of both is to keep things safe from prying eyes and those with larcenous intent. How they work is also similar. Just like a combination lock requires the input of specific numbers in a certain sequence, a password requires the input of specific characters in a certain sequence. This comparison seemed to work well for the students. They use a combination lock every day when they visit their lockers. They use passwords every day when they log onto the computers. What impressed them most was the total number of combinations were possible for their locks (64,000), and the number of passwords there can be for an 8 character password with Capital Letters and the digits 0-9 (2.8 Trillion). We then discussed how long it would take a hacker with a program that tested 600 possible passwords a minute to crack such a password. It would take the program almost 9,000 years to try all the possible passwords. Have you ever given a thought to how many possible passwords there could be for the different apps you have to log into?