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0 pointsjacquesm4y ago0 comments

> The thing is you don't know the length of the password. It could be more than the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe, or 12.

I'll take 12 then.

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bushbaba4y ago

Well we know it has to fit in a string data type. And there’s only soooo much ram available to a JavaScript variable.

AdamJacobMuller4y ago

Not necessarily. The hash could have been generated with something other than javascript.

In fact because functions like sha256 are iterative it's possible to hash a password which is longer than the RAM in a system. Technically possible to hash a password which is longer than storage in a system too, if you don't care about storing the password.

kzrdude4y ago

so the puzzle author could "cheat" and just present a 256-bit number and not know the preimage at all, which would be a fun shortcut.

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