Using Python

Expressions, 10pt) Write (and run) expressions for the following tasks (the expressions here are more important than the results, so be sure to show your expressions, not just your results).

a. Let's say you've picked a password with 8 characters (where a character is either an upper or a lower case letter in the latin alphabet, so you have 52 choices for each character). How long would it take for a brute-force attack to break your password, that is, how many seconds does it take to try all possible passwords? You can assume that your attacker knows that your password consists of 8 upper/lower case letters, and that the attacker's computer can check one password every nanosecond(10^-9 seconds). Note: the passwords need not be meaningful, so AyGGtpBx could be your password. Hint: In a first step, write an expressions to calculate the number of possible passwords (how many passwords of length 1 are there? How many passwords of length 2? 3? ... 8?). Then modify the expression to calculate the time it takes to try all passwords.

b. To improve your security, you increase the length of your password to 12 characters. In that case, a brute-force attack will take roughly 390877006486 seconds. To get an idea of how long that is, re-express this in different units:

how many days are 390877006486 seconds?

how many years are 390877006486 seconds?

how many millenia are 390877006486 seconds?

Hint: You can assume that a year is 365 days, and a millenium is 1000 years. Note: Include the expression you use for calculating your answer as well are your result.