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I had this in university - when I started some documents I needed were delivered to my uni mailbox which was guarded by a code, but we weren't due to get our code until we had completely "matriculated" (signed in, got our IDs, etc). So I just sat down with a couple of beers and set out out to try all 9999 combinations (it was thankfully in the 2000s or so).

Made me realise that my university mailbox wasn't actually that secure ...

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Ok, here’s one for you. This is almost too painful to repeat it’s so bad. When I went to college, the university implemented at 4 digit prefix that students would use when dialing from a campus phone so they could charge long distance calls directly to their university bill. With only 9999 numbers allocated to 6000 students, it was comically simple to use a random number and make that long overdue call to mom.

Right. It lasted a month before it was scrapped.

In the town I live, there was an incident a few years ago with a teenager who got access to his mother’s handgun. She had the gun in a gun safe, with a four digit combo. The teen came home every day after school and started brute-forcing the password. 0000, 0001, and so on. He was determined and patient, and it worked.

https://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/teen-...

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