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Don’t be a Brute: A Programming Assignment for Exposing Undergraduate Students to Computational Complexity and Heuristic Problem-Solving Approaches

Tom Wulf

College of Applied Science, University of Cincinnati

Abstract:

A programming assignment that was developed for an undergraduate course in computer security in which students simulate a brute force password guessing attack is described. This exercise helps students to understand issues of computability, re-enforces the basic mathematics of combinatorics, and provides a springboard for discussions of heuristic versus brute-force problem- solving approaches. In the context of a course on computer security, the assignment serves to tangibly demonstrate issues with password selection and user policies that apply to this issue.

Undergraduate students in Computer Science Technology and Information Engineering Technology do not receive the same training in the formal analysis of algorithms that students in standard theory based Computer Science programs do. It is clear, however, that IT students must develop a basic understanding of problem complexity issues and heuristic problem solving approaches to be successful in their careers. The exercise described in this paper gives students a hands-on feel for computational complexity through a programming assignment which simulates a brute-force, password-guessing attack.

Preliminaries: Class Lecture and Readings

In class lecture and assigned readings, students were first introduced to a brute-force password guessing approach in which every possible password string using a finite symbol set for strings of a specified length or range of lengths is generated. Testing for the actual password string then is simply an exhaustive linear search through this generated set. The first issue required in order to examine the magnitude of this task is to determine the cardinality of the set to be tested. This provides an opportunity to review the multiplication rule for the cardinality of permutation sets with the students. A hypothetical operating system that restricts the user to choose password strings of length 8 from the symbol set consisting of the uppercase letters is described and the cardinality of this password set is calculated as an example.

The next step is to consider real world operating systems which allow password strings composed Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Yau, S. (2003, June), Don’t Be A Brute: A Programming Assignment For Exposing Undergraduate Students To Computational Complexity And Heuristic Problem Solving Approaches Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--12666