IANAL, but math is explicitly exempted from copyright law, so “art” wouldn’t apply. As for the more general “expression”, running a program is a function: it t

IANAL, but math is explicitly exempted from copyright law, so “art” wouldn’t apply. As for the more general “expression”, running a program is a function: it transforms one thing into another thing in a deterministic way. That is applying a tool: you would have to argue that the thing you were doing with it, in this case “breaking a password”, was expression, which, well, good luck with that one: you are back to trying to argue that an explicit crime is actually performance art. All of this is just facts and tools: there is no creativity involved at any stage.