[Ads-l] misuse of "permutation"

James A. Landau JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM
Thu Mar 24 12:19:48 UTC 2016


On  Wed, 23 Mar 2016 21:09:28 Zone-0400 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> quoted:

Macworld.com
Forensics expert says FBI to use NAND-mirroring to crack terrorist's 
iPhone
"... Farook’s iPhone used a four-digit passcode, which would result in
10,000 permutations, a low enough number to be possible _to brute-force_
using NAND-mirroring ..."
http://goo.gl/bmg4XX

There are exactly 24 permutations of a four-digit passcode.  The writer meant to say that there are 10,000 *possible passcodes*.

    - Jim Landau

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