English

Finding passwords by random walks: How long does it take?

Cryptography and Security 2015-05-14 v1 Other Condensed Matter Data Structures and Algorithms Probability

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.1051,
  title  = {Finding passwords by random walks: How long does it take?},
  author = {G. Kabatiansky and G. Oshanin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.1051},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

To appear in J. Phys. A, special issue on "Random Search Problem: Trends and Perspectives", eds.: MEG da Luz, E Raposo, GM Viswanathan and A Grosberg

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:43:03.523Z