I think you're worrying about the wrong kind of attacks

I'm not worrying about anything. There is no such thing as "the wrong kind of attack". People being people, will reuse the same passwords for different sites.

So, you hack a few "low risk" sites, grab a few thousand userid/password combos and then try them on your real target.

Technically rejecting anything under 6 characters or so also does nothing else but reduce the number of possibilities but that's just the possibilities that will usually be tried first anyway

If I know your site doesn't accept passwords of less that 6 characters, that is somewhere between 782,757,789,696 and 308,915,776 permutations , depending upon what other silly restrictions you have in-place, that I don't have to try. Why make my life easy?

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

The start of some sanity?

In reply to Re^3: Password strength calculation by BrowserUk
in thread Password strength calculation by cavac

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