Probability of random key will work?

Ok, I wonder what is the probability of random key will activate your account.

Beta key is 4 * 5 = 20 chars long. Valid characters in beta key are A-Z 0-9, its 26 + 10 = 36 chars. If the key is just random characters and it is not constrained somehow, we have "just"

36^20 = 13 nonillion, 367 octillion, 494 septillion, 538 sextillion, 843 quintillion, 734 quadrillion, 67 trillion, 838 billion, 845 million, 976 thousand and 576 unique beta keys (13 367 494 538 843 734 067 838 845 976 576 if you like numbers more than words).

If there is about 100 000 valid keys (my rough guess), the probability that random key will work is approx 1 : 133 674 945 388 437 340 678 388 459 and that is not positive at all.

If your testing speed will be 1 key per second, the average time to success is approx 300 000 000 universe ages (1 universe age is age of our universe).

If my computations are correct, random testing of keys is not worth of your time. But probability does not preclude the possibility of success at first try (and if you succeed with your first try, you will be probably the biggest lucker in a world :). But I am not saying that you should try it. It can be against the rules, I dont't know. Bu the probability is probably the best guard against random tries.

We non-beta-invited just have to wait for lucky key or random beta-invite timer.

PS: Now I am wondered what is the probability to be picked with random beta-invite timer (or the average time to be invited) but I have no data counting it. Maybe someone from GGG could do rough estimation :)

EDIT: Ok, so situation is even worse. There are no 100 000 valid beta keys, but only about thousands. :-D But As dem0critus sad, keys are probably not completly random, so It is not as bad :-D

I believe they generate keys based on demand (i.e. current beta members inviting friends and GGG generating some for contests). I seriously doubt there is more than maybe 1,000-10,000 unclaimed keys

Not really the best way of approaching the problem, as there are most likely patterns that can be picked up in the keys.

In other words, you would be correct if the keys that were generated were 'truly' random, but a truly random number generator doesn't exist in the real world.

From a crackers perspective, the goal isn't to try all the keys that a truly random number generator could create, but to find patterns by analyzing a very large set of keys in order to reduce the number of viable keys to a more manageable, realistic number of tries.

To be clear, I'm not in any way attempting this, nor do I have the knowledge or background to efficiently 'beat' their key generator.

Just my 2 cents!

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Vulpes wrote:

I believe they generate keys based on demand (i.e. current beta members inviting friends and GGG generating some for contests). I seriously doubt there is more than maybe 1,000-10,000 unclaimed keys

I don't know how exactly beta-keys system works but here on forum people are just giving keys even if they are not from GGG. So I thought that every player has 0 - 2 ~ 1 valid beta key + some more from GGG. I don't know how many players are in PoE but it can be tens of thousands? On this is based my guess and I intentionally sad larger number. The real number does not matter because of number of all keys anyways :)

thanks for clearing that up hopefully the timer will pick me soon

ya bottom line is that there is absolutely no reason to expect to get something like this functional in any reasonable amount of time. period.

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NightElfik wrote:

If your testing speed will be 1 key per second, the average time to success is approx 300 000 000 universe ages.

It would actually be much, much longer than that, because your account is temporarily disallowed from entering keys if you enter a certain amount of incorrect keys in a certain amount of time.