It's like a nano X Prize, seemingly aimed against pass phrases.
Bitcoin wallet hacking is a really fun test case, because it begs people to acknowledge the opportunity costs involved in cracking. Cracking a wallet password can always be baselined against mining.
Cracks should happen whenever:
operations_per_password / wallet_size < operations_per_coin
(You can increase security either by growing your passwords or shrinking your wallets. There's some ideal inflection point in there somewhere...)
There are opportunity costs to cracking passwords in all other scenarios too, they're just harder to observe. ie, whenever it's cheaper to bribe one of your employees than crack their password, then, congrats, your passwords are officially "secure" (even if your business isn't).
Bitcoin wallet hacking is a really fun test case, because it begs people to acknowledge the opportunity costs involved in cracking. Cracking a wallet password can always be baselined against mining.
Cracks should happen whenever: operations_per_password / wallet_size < operations_per_coin
(You can increase security either by growing your passwords or shrinking your wallets. There's some ideal inflection point in there somewhere...)
There are opportunity costs to cracking passwords in all other scenarios too, they're just harder to observe. ie, whenever it's cheaper to bribe one of your employees than crack their password, then, congrats, your passwords are officially "secure" (even if your business isn't).