Kind of both. The modern way of brute forcing is to just hash the 100,000 or so most common passwords, previously leaked passwords, and minor permutations of all of the above. It’s computationally and space intensive, but for a determined attacker entirely doable on modern hardware. That’s why complexity matters, because it’s not a simple iteration through every possible permutation, but a targeted search through a known password list.
Kind of both. The modern way of brute forcing is to just hash the 100,000 or so most common passwords, previously leaked passwords, and minor permutations of all of the above. It’s computationally and space intensive, but for a determined attacker entirely doable on modern hardware. That’s why complexity matters, because it’s not a simple iteration through every possible permutation, but a targeted search through a known password list.