Technology and the Internet
Everyone who owns or has access to a computer probably has several passwords for various programs. These codes are supposed to be a secret, random combination of characters. However, some psychologists believe passwords are predictable based on personality traits, and many computer hackers claim that any password can be acquired. To study computer security at Spectaguard Acquisition, a special program was developed and used to systematically try various passwords for randomly selected user accounts. The time (in hours) needed to obtain each password is given in the table below
Assume the distribution of times is normal.
a. Find a 98% confidence interval for the true population variance of the time needed to acquire someone's password.
b. Use the methods described in Section 6.3, page 272, to check for any evidence of non-normality.