In a civilized society such as our own, brute force seldom leads to positive results. I mean, what kind of a world would we live in if people could have their way just by pushing and forcing things around with brute force? While I don’t mean to imply things can’t be manipulated by people with little scrupulous substance, we should keep in mind it generally takes subtlety rather than force… And this is something that remains valid both for the online and offline realities. When it comes to brute force methods of password cracking, you should rest assured it’s not an effective technique of breaking into email accounts. This article will provide you with some background information to help you understand just why you shouldn’t be worried about brute force attacks.

When it comes to account hacking, brute force methods are regarded as one of the bluntest ways someone could use to try stealing your password. This strategy involves using special software to try and force its way into a certain account by using all possible combinations of letters and characters. Now, it doesn’t take a mathematics expert to realize why this is such a blunt technique: including all letters in the alphabet, numbers and punctuation, there are around 40 possible values for each character in the password. Then, for a password bearing (let’s say) 6 characters, a brute force attack could require up to 40x40x40x40x40x40 = 4,096,000,000 attempts before successfully cracking the code! And most passwords usually have more than 6 characters, so we’re talking about an insane number of possible combinations.

Granted, you might argue that using special software and a very fast machine, it’s possible to get around the huge amount of possible combinations and eventually break into the designated account. Well… yes, and no. While brute force attacks would theoretically find the right password if provided with enough time (and opportunity), truth of the matter is that all modern password-protect accounts are secured against this method using a simple strategy. Usually, the account will get blocked if someone repeatedly fails to input the right password, and reactivation will require human intervention (such as entering a Captcha code, which is designed not to be recognizable by a machine). So, as you can see, brute force attacks are not something you should be worried with, since it’s impossible for a human to enforce such attack (there are just too many possible combinations), and impossible for a machine (since it won’t get more than half a dozen or so attempts before the account gets blocked).

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