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> If they were randomly generated and of sufficient length, yes.

What does that buy you, if they are in plain text?

(Well, randomness quasi-guarantees that they are not re-used; I covered that.)

If we have passwords in plain text, issues about length related to cracking hashes is moot; the cracking that still matters is someone guessing at the login prompt, where we can lock out accounts after N attempts.

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> What does that buy you, if they are in plain text?

Nothing. That's why I was agreeing with you for that subset.

But N may be smaller than you might think, when frequency data is also supplied by the API.

https://gist.github.com/roycewilliams/60b77640a962125b04ae67...

What about the other case - when they're not random, but also not reused ... such that the psychology of the user's password-selection methodology might be exposed?

If you have a password selection methodology that you do not change when hashed passwords are compromised, then it doesn't help you. The methodology will be uncovered once the password is cracked, even if that specific password doesn't itself work anywhere anymore. It's somewhat better if the methodology is discovered later than earlier, I suppose.

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