this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Dictionary attacks usually contain a dictionary of common passwords. To use a dictionary for this, you'd have to use a word dictionary instead of a password one. And then you're back to combinatorics.

4 words, where each word is in the dictionary: N^4. However the N here is way bigger than the amount of ASCII characters. Especially if each of the words may be of a different language. If N is larger than 16384, then it has more combinations than a random 8 ASCII character password. 16384 = sqrt(sqrt(128^8)). Quick Google search says English has more than 1 million words.

Therefore even if you know that the user generated their password using this method and used a dictionary attack tailored for this method, it would still be harder to break than a random 8character password.

[–] Mika@piefed.ca 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

https://internationalenglishtest.com/blog/how-many-words-are-in-the-english-language/

According to recent studies, the average adult native English speaker knows between 20,000 and 35,000 words

I mean sure it might still work, but would make more sense to grasp for some trickier words, like fantasy character names etc.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The thing is to have a program randomly select the words for you. That way the words are not related between them, and you aren't limited by only the words you know.

[–] Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 32 minutes ago

Random words, one misspelled, occasional symbols.

Correct-horse7battery,stapple

If your password can be brute forced then you're just not trying.