---
title: 'Password Strength'
url: 'https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/30/password-strength'
markdown: 'https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/30/password-strength.md'
date: '2011-08-30'
description: "\_ To add to this excellent xkcd comic, the following site also exists : Password Haystacks. Which is a stronger password? T@+t0O or dudewhatdoesmytattoosay (Click to find out, I’ll wait). Pretty sweet indeed. What a difference. Anyways, the reason I’m linking this stuff is that th…"
taxonomy:
  category:
    - blog
---

# Password Strength

### [Password Strength](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2011/08/30/password-strength)

   August 30, 2011, 12:00 am  

[![](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png "XKCD's Password Strength")](http://xkcd.com/936/)

To add to this excellent [xkcd](http://xkcd.com/) comic, the following site also exists : [Password Haystacks](https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm).

Which is a stronger password?

## [T@+t0O](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tattoo.png)

or

## [dudewhatdoesmytattoosay](https://blog.recursiveprocess.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/dudetattoo.png)

(Click to find out, I’ll wait).

Pretty [sweet](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRVnOFdZi3I) indeed. What a difference.

Anyways, the reason I’m linking this stuff is that this would make a great lesson in exponents. While the first password uses far more letters and symbols, so it has a large base, since the power is only 6 there aren’t as many permutations to try. But the second password’s power of 23 fully compensates for the smaller base of letters to check.

The buy-in for this type of problem is that I’d bet that most students would pick T@+t0O as the stronger password. It’s a fun day in math class when you can fight (false) intuition.

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