{"id":49764531,"user":"red75prime","time":1789806453,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Can we stop using "brute force" for designating "tour de force"?","comments":[{"id":49764883,"user":"rrr_oh_man","time":1789810474,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_attack","comments":[{"id":49764899,"user":"red75prime","time":1789810610,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

I'm aware. Locating a single probable key is exactly not that.","comments":[{"id":49764940,"user":"tovej","time":1789811073,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Going through a list of possibilities one by one is bruee forcing.","comments":[{"id":49765090,"user":"stalfie","time":1789812600,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

I think it is legitimate to argue that the process here does not fit the usual definition of "brute forcing". Traditionally, brute forcing would refer to something like a dictionary attack, where an algorithm tries to match all possible combinations of words to eg. find a password. Here, the approach was more common sense based, using historical records and possible error sources to narrow down the possibility space enormously in advance, try out a much more limited set of options within that space until you got a result that made sense, and finally validate those results using historical records. It's the exact same kind of "brute forcing" a human expert would do.","comments":[{"id":49772239,"user":"0x457","time":1789874174,"time_ago":"3 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Why? Because dictionary here is smaller than your idea of dictionary for brute force?","comments":[{"id":49772747,"user":"red75prime","time":1789882360,"time_ago":"3 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Because it wasn't an expert or a heuristic developed by an expert that made it possible to decrease the dictionary size.","comments":[],"comments_count":0,"level":5,"url":"item?id=49772747"}],"comments_count":1,"level":4,"url":"item?id=49772239"}],"comments_count":2,"level":3,"url":"item?id=49765090"},{"id":49765152,"user":"red75prime","time":1789813127,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

If the final set of possibilities is astronomically smaller than a naive one, calling the whole process a "brute force exercise" draws attention to an astronomically insignificant part.","comments":[{"id":49766799,"user":"rrr_oh_man","time":1789827733,"time_ago":"3 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

That’s a fair point.","comments":[],"comments_count":0,"level":4,"url":"item?id=49766799"}],"comments_count":1,"level":3,"url":"item?id=49765152"}],"comments_count":5,"level":2,"url":"item?id=49764940"}],"comments_count":6,"level":1,"url":"item?id=49764899"}],"comments_count":7,"level":0,"url":"item?id=49764883"}],"comments_count":8,"url":"item?id=49764531"}

Comment by red75prime