History Main / PasswordSlotMachine

* DetectiveConan: Ran has Conan's phone, thinking he's Shinichi and her sent SMS being on it would prove the connection, and decides to crack the password. [[ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish Birthdates]] aren't correct, so she decides to go the BruteForceMethod of starting with 0000 and proceeding one digit at a time. After a few hours of trying, she wonders if the password is "Holmes" in number-format and it turns out to be right.

* Jinpei in the 1994 OVA of ''Anime/ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman'' carried one of these as the hacker of the team.

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}: Used by a pair of car thieves to crack the security code on a Ferrari in "Cavallino Rampante".

* Ash uses a gadget that does to crack the four digit security code to the employee entrance at a bank in the ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' epsiode "The Hush Heist".

** Could this have been the rules of the system being different than in the real world?

* ''Film/TheMatrix'' both opens and closes with a scene of this, as the Agents lock in on the telephone number. Back in the pre-computer days, telephone routing systems really did use successive digits to determine routing (just as the first three digits still indicate the exchange, modulo number portability). However, this would have resulted in determining the digits from left to right, not randomly as shown in the movie.

* The first ''MissionImpossible'' movie adaptation used a similar method back in the 90s, when this trope might conceivably have been TruthInTelevision.
* In ''{{Terminator}} 2: Judgment Day'', John Connor has a [[ChekhovsGun program on his laptop computer that determines]] ATM [=PINs=] this way.
* ''WarGames'' may be the TropeCodifier. Near the end of the movie, WOPR tries to figure out the launch codes to the nuclear weapons, randomly locking in on digits as they scroll by the screen.

* Ash uses a gadget that does to crack the four digit security code to the employee entrance at a bank in the ''{{Hustle}}'' epsiode "The Hush Heist".

* A giant binary version of this is used by ''ReBoot'''s Megabyte, twice. The first time he used it to hack into stolen files from Dot's organizer; files which happened to contain hundreds of binome [=PIDs.=] The second time he used it to extract a portal command from Phong's mind.

* In ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasquaradeBloodlines'', this is the visual effect associated with using the "Hacking" skill on a computer terminal. Given the wide variety of systems represented by that single simple login prompt, this was probably the easiest option.
* At the beginning of ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest4'', the planetary coordinates of Roger Wilco's location on Magmetheus are displayed in this manner.

[[quoteright:160:[[LuckyLuke http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/LuckyLuke_-_DT_9263.JPG]]]]

* In ''LoisAndClark'', Superman did it at least twice -- once with numbers, once with a word he knew was about Norse mythology.

* The ''Franchise/JamesBond game ''{{Nightfire}}'' featured a handheld gadget that did this so you could get through locked doors in the level. For some reason you push buttons on it as it's working at random intervals.

* The brute-forcer program in the computer cracking "simulation" ''{{Uplink}}''. This is deliberate: ''{{Uplink}}'' has far less to do with actual cybercrime than the movies ''Hackers'', ''{{Sneakers}}'' and ''WarGames''.
* In ''VampireBloodlines'', this is the visual effect associated with using the "Hacking" skill on a computer terminal. Given the wide variety of systems represented by that single simple login prompt, this was probably the easiest option.
* At the beginning of ''SpaceQuest4'', the planetary coordinates of Roger Wilco's location on Magmetheus are displayed in this manner.

* The JamesBond game ''Nightfire'' featured a handheld gadget that did this so you could get through locked doors in the level. For some reason you push buttons on it as it's working at random intervals.

* There exists a password script for personal home pages known as "[=HpbChkPwd=]", ostensibly from IBM Japan's [[http://www-06.ibm.com/software/jp/internet/hpb/ Home Page Builder]] software, which can be cracked via a Password Slot Machine. The client side can see an "encrypted string" and a [=JavaScript=] verification function. Analysis of the function shows that each character in the encrypted string is affected by only one character in the password, and also reveals some clues as to what the decrypted string should look like. Thus, cracking the password is a matter of locking in one character at a time in the password, and not even necessarily starting from the first or last character. By the way, if any would-be black-hat script kiddies are reading this, some crucial details have been left out a la MythBusters.

More ridiculous is when it cycles through dozens of numbers on the readout when it should, at most, only have to cycle through ten if each digit can be "locked in." If a password is ''n'' symbols long and there are ''m'' possibilities for each symbol, then the complexity of brute force is usually ''m''^''n'', but the password slot machine reduces it to ''m''*''n''. For example, a six digit password of only numbers takes up to 10^6 = 1,000,000 tries to brute force, but if correct digits "lock in" then it takes at most 10*6 = 60 tries instead (the best strategy would be to cycle through an ordered string e.g. 12345, then 23451, 34512, etc this would cut guesses down to ''m'').

** Averted in the episode ''Dalek'' when the titular Dalek begins its prison break it is faced with a locked door with "over a million combinations" however it cycles through all the combinations at high speeds before realizing that the password is a series of asterisks and though each new asterix appears and stays there this happens in sequence because by this point the Dalek has eliminated the actual numbers for that digit and so moves on to the next.

There is a possible justification when the password is being guessed sequentially; say we have a password of 325 and we work it out by in putting every possible combination in order the digits look like they are locked in but would be replaced if no match was found with the following numbers so at first it would look like the first digit is locked in as 0, then 1 and then 2 before settling on 3.

What you normally see in a movie or TV show is all the possible codes flashing on the screen, and then the computer locks in correct digits ''one at a time''. It seems that computer password systems are similar to tumbler locks: You can pick it one at a time. But real passwords either work or don't. It's not a game of Mastermind.

* Parodied in the ''LupinIII'' movie ''Crisis in Tokyo'': on encountering a door secured with a password this way, Goemon concentrates, lets out a yell and brings his hand down on the readout. The password falls into place, and an impressed Jigen notes they should try their luck at Vegas. The end credits show them doing just that.

* The [=LanManager=] hash, used to store user passwords in all versions of Windows up to and including XP, is a form of this. It can't be broken one character at a time, but it is split into two 7-character chunks - which makes it vulnerable to simple lookup tables or plain brute force. For exactly this reason it was partially phased out in XP (maintained only for backwards compatability with NT4 servers) and completely removed in Vista. [[hottip:Security note:If you are still using XP, Lanman is enabled by default and it is advised to disable it, if there are no [=Win98=] machines in your local network.]]

* Used as a minigame in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' and ''FalloutNewVegas''. When attempting to hack a locked terminal the player must attempt to guess the correct password from a list of random words and characters in four tries (up to seven if the player manages to find a set of symbols to reset their allowance). An incorrect guess will tell the player how many characters were correct.

* Used as a minigame in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}''.

* One of Artie's gizmos in ''Series/Warehouse13'' is a steampunkish variant with a USB connector.

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* ''SoWeird'' features a variation of this, when a Hangman cheating program is used to guess the name of a fairy. This doesn't work for either. Although Hangman ''does'' tell you the moment you get a character right, you only have a limited number of tries, and although it was explicitly stated that the fairy guessing game gave unlimited tries, there's no way the program could know if it got a character right.