How long would it take to crack the password with brute force?
If brute force is used, that is, the attacker attempts to find the password by trying every possibility, then, for 128 bit encryption it would take about 97,112,547,637,254,100,000,000,000 years (9.71×1025 years, or about 97 trillion years). By this time, the invading computer or computers would long have been burned out by our sun becoming a red giant. Should they survive somewhere, our sun’s temperature would be lower than that of your freezer long before the password had been found. Every star in the universe would have suffered this fate before the password was cracked. If computers increased in speed a trillion times, then the answer would still be the same. Even the imaginary (or real) Super Computer would take 107,903 billion years (107,903 x 1012) to test every possible password in 128 bit encryption. Clearly, using brute force is not a practical approach when the password has been selected randomly. The above incredible figures assume that each item in the password has an equa
