Finding passwords by random walks: How long does it take?
G. Kabatiansky (1,2), G.Oshanin (2,3) ((1) Dobrushin Mathematical, Laboratory, Institute of Information Transmission Problems, Moscow, Russia,, (2) Laboratory J.-V. Poncelet, Independent University of Moscow, Russia, (3), LPTMC, University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris, France)
TL;DR
This paper compares the efficiency of deterministic and random search strategies for finding passwords, showing that random search is at most twice as slow as the lawnmower method.
Contribution
It provides a theoretical comparison of search strategies for password discovery, quantifying the efficiency gap between random and deterministic approaches.
Findings
Random search takes at most twice as long as lawnmower search.
The analysis applies to passwords of length M from a Q-ary alphabet.
The results quantify the efficiency difference between the two strategies.
Abstract
We compare an efficiency of a deterministic "lawnmower" and random search strategies for finding a prescribed sequence of letters (a password) of length M in which all letters are taken from the same Q-ary alphabet. We show that at best a random search takes two times longer than a "lawnmower" search.
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