system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why is it that when I put in my correct password into the computer, it logs in almost immediately, but when I put in a wrong password, it takes significantly longer to reject me?
gpt
It's a deliberate pause that serves two purposes. The first is that it makes it take years for someone to try all possible passwords (called a brute force attack). The second is that if the computer always responded as quickly as possible a sophisticated attacker could measure the slight difference (nanoseconds) it takes the computer to reject a password to infer how many characters in the password are correct (called a timing attack); by making all rejections take the same amount of time this information leak is plugged.