Do special characters increase password strength?

Question

Information Security

The length of the password is known to the attacker. But it is not known whether special characters are used.

Answer 1

Against brute force - yes. In addition to the fact that there are special characters, their list for enumeration will be unknown to the bruteforcer.
Against other methods (password theft, social engineering, vulnerabilities) - no, of course.

Answer 2

Of course, they will increase if the hacking goes through bruteforce, because. you will increase the alphabet for selection. And they will also increase the letters from different localizations
. In the same place, it seems like the number of options = the number of letters in the degree of the number of characters.

Answer 3

Of course "yes".
Imagine that you need to open a combination lock. Have you seen one with wheels with numbers on it? Here's one ...
You know the number of wheels.
But the symbols on each wheel on such locks are usually 10 (from 0 to 9). The number of combinations is 1000, respectively.
Now we add letters. If only Latin and only one register, then there are already 10 + 26 = 36 characters on the wheel.
Is the logic clear?

Answer 4

In some cases, they do not exactly increase.

Answer 5

Special characters increase durability when using dictionaries.
Brute-force with all characters available in the given system, therefore, in this case, it does not increase.

Answer 6

increases the time it takes for a cracker to break into your machine

Answer 7

Yes, besides the length, this is one of the 4 elements of a strong password!