> A modern consumer GPU can crack "four random English words" in a day. [...] but arguing that that scheme is actually secure is just wrong.

Let me do just that!

This is a networked service. You send your password (or a hashed form) to it, and it validates it. You don't have the local hash to bruteforce it offline.

Even if we only consider the top 10k english words, it's 10000^4. It's going to take years to bruteforce this over a network because you'll go through so many rate-limits, cooldown periods, and outright bans that it's questionable whether it's even possible.

> This is a networked service. You send your password (or a hashed form) to it

Hopefully neither. But given everybody involved in VNC seems to be the same batch of clueless morons who built all those PHP web forums twenty years ago with MD5 as the password hash, who knows what they cobbled together. Maybe an expert can chime in about what actually happens here?

Yes, for a sensible scheme this can't work.

Virtually any password other than "password123" is fine if you're rate limited to a few guesses per day by a networked service. Passwords should be secure against the inevitable data breach when the service you're using loses their hashed password database, which happens on a routine basis.