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So was the estimate how long it would take 5.5 years or half that?

The estimate was the time to try all possible combinations, per Apple:

> “This means it would take more than 5 ½ years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers,”

Surely you understand that trying all combinations is not necessary to find an individual password -- you can stop after you've succeeded. Are you really not understanding this?

I understand that it's misleading.

Do you keep searching your house for something after you find it? Apple's claim is an upper bound, it's pretty rare that the thing you're looking for is in the last possible place it could be.

It's possible to brute force it in 2 seconds too. In fact just as likely to do that as it is to find the key in the last 2 seconds of a full search.

And it would also be misleading for a security firm to say they could brute force it in 2 seconds.

If it takes 5.5 years to try all combinations, on average it will take half that to find the correct one, because you can stop looking once you found it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com