Yeah, you're wrong. You'd be right if password cracking was limited to checking 'a' through 'z', then 'aa' through 'zz', then 'aaa' through 'zzz', but that's n

Yeah, you're wrong. You'd be right if password cracking was limited to checking 'a' through 'z', then 'aa' through 'zz', then 'aaa' through 'zzz', but that's not how it usually works in practice. In practice, a cracking program is generally going to have a dictionary and an algorithm for generating passwords based on modifying and/or combining the words in that dictionary according to certain rules. The dictionary isn't just English words, but also common non-English words, words formed by keys that are close on the keyboard, etc. If that dictionary contains "asd" and "1234" (which is a pretty safe bet), it will probably end up trying "asdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasd1234" much sooner than you would predict based on an exhaustive search. I can't say for sure that 13 seconds is the right answer, but I think it's the right order of magnitude. We're talking seconds/minutes, not years. Edit: changed "sequential search" to "exhaustive search" to reflect the fact that it doesn't have to be strictly ordered.