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In respect to this, does brute force still work?

Brute force attacks are a simple type of attack on different systems and web sites. They've existed for a long time and are still effective and widely used today. The attack is easy to implement and many tools are available to brute force attack different systems and services.

Also, is password cracking illegal? They can also be protected by two-factor authentication, which is considered to be almost unbreakable in any context. By the way, in case you're wondering why password-cracking programs aren't illegal, it's because there are perfectly valid and legal reasons to use them.

Subsequently, question is, how long would a brute force attack take?

So, to break an 8 character password, it will take (1.7*10^-6 * 52^8) seconds / 2, or 1.44 years. Note that on a GPU, this would only take about 5 days. On a supercomputer or botnet, this would take 7.6 minutes. As you can see, simply using lowercase and uppercase characters is not enough.

How long does it take to brute force a 10 character password?

Nine-character passwords take five days to break, 10-character words take four months, and 11-character passwords take 10 years. Make it up to 12 characters, and you're looking at 200 years' worth of security – not bad for one little letter.