Question 710523
calculate the entropy of "or better yet" the number of permutations of a 16 digit password that uses 0 thru 9 and/or 26 letters. I would be curious to know the formula to be able to do the math myself for say 15 digits, 14 digits, 13 digits etc. to understand the entropy.
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If it's not case sensitive, each of the 16 "digits" can be one of 36 characters.
--> 36^16 =~ 7.95866E24 combinations.
If you try 1000 combinations per second, it'll take 252,367,488,300,000,000,000,000 years to try them all.
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For 15, 14, 13, etc, it's 36 to the power of the # of characters.
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If it's case sensitive, each character has 62 possibilities, so it's 62^n, n = # of characters.