&gt; Given a large enough work factor, there literally aren&#x27;t enough resources in the entire universe to brute-force even a single hash.<p>Or, given a strong-enough original password.  I postulate that, until the moment I posted it, &#x27;3BgZhZcGPcHswmfic79jgjsfqyMKW1Rh1rkFjagJC090V2tljd9Zy2vpYJw944HG&#x27; would never have been brute-forced, even with an extremely low work factor (in fact, it wouldn&#x27;t have been brute-forced even without bcrypt, scrypt or PBKDF2: even were it just stored as a simple SHA2-512(pw) (i.e., baafbe64d25f27d4b7b2965f9abf43cf25acd8fc6021798a90253f33b3071e9
fd145eaccd555290913c8679fd4acf949f05243ac1089548abbab0e0ed77e63
31), no computer on earth, nor all the computers which ever have been or ever will be, would have brute-forced it (unless there&#x27;s something we don&#x27;t know about SHA2, or about computing).<p>Lesson?  Always use high-quality random passwords.  For a 128-bit security level, with upper- and lower-case letters &amp; digits (62 characters, which means each character yields (log 62 2) = 5.9542 bits of entropy), you want a 22-character truly random password.  &#x27;xNl5gkbgXntyxi3oNO1dML&#x27; is a perfectly fine password (save for the fact that it&#x27;s now public).<p>According to the NSA [1], 256-bit keys should be used to protect data up to TOP SECRET; that works out to 43 characters.  Hence, &#x27;TIdmzj1COc9ECwcilyQYVfLl5Dt8ti3UUlDVULrUrfx&#x27; is as secure an example password as could be.<p>(Yes, I&#x27;m assuming here that your password-generation algorithm is truly random.  If not, do not pass Go; do not collect $200…)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nsa.gov&#x2F;ia&#x2F;programs&#x2F;suiteb_cryptography&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nsa.gov&#x2F;ia&#x2F;programs&#x2F;suiteb_cryptography&#x2F;</a>