Man jailed over computer password refusal

[Raistlin]

Originally Posted by Waldo Pepper

There are many encryption programs available free on the internet that use algorithms that if properly implemented are nigh impossible to crack.

Spot on, and as you point out they're actually not even 'cracking' (although that's the terminology that they use) they're 'brute forcing' it.

Given that they're probably having to try the most common characters a conservative estimate suggests that they're most likely going to looking at somewhere around about 10^56 years to try all the possibilities.