Sci/Tech New 25 GPU Monster Devours Passwords In Seconds

[tom_mai78101]

There needs to be some kind of Moore’s law analog to capture the tremendous advances in the speed of password cracking operations. Just within the last five years, there’s been an explosion in innovation in this ancient art, as researchers have realized that they can harness specialized silicon and cloud based computing pools to quickly and efficiently break passwords.

A presentation at the Passwords^12 Conference in Oslo, Norway (slides available here - PDF), has moved the goalposts, again. Speaking on Monday, researcher Jeremi Gosney (a.k.a epixoip) demonstrated a rig that leveraged the Open Computing Language (OpenCL) framework and a technology known as Virtual OpenCL (VCL) to run the HashCat password cracking program across a cluster of five, 4U servers equipped with 25 AMD Radeon GPUs and communicating at 10 Gbps over Infiniband switched fabric.

Gosney’s system elevates password cracking to the next level, and effectively renders even the strongest passwords protected with weaker encryption algorithms, like Microsoft’s LM and NTLM, obsolete.

Read more here.

 

[Accname]

Thats the reason i dont use passwords at all.
Important stuff is not on my computer but on remote hard disks.
I dont mind even if my entire disk is cleared by a hacker or a virus, i just reinstall everything.

 

[Varine]

That's called paranoid.

 

[Accname]

That's called paranoid.

I call it dont giving a shit about passwords.

 

[Varine]

What's your password to this account?

 

[Accname]

What's your password to this account?

I dont remember. I use firefox, the programm remembers the password so that i dont have to.

 

[Varine]

What happens when you erase your disk and can't log back into your email to recover your password to everything?

 

[Accname]

I make another email address and send a mail to thehelper and tell him what happened probably.

Or i just make another account. I dont know, i dont care.

 

[Varine]

I think you have Asperger's.

 

[Accname]

I think you have Asperger's.

I think you are the one whos paranoid sir.

How likely is it that my entire hard disk is wiped on both my home computer, the computer of my girlfriend and my laptop?

 

[Varine]

I think I have lost this conversation, and hereby forfeit.

 

[Accname]

I think I have lost this conversation, and hereby forfeit.

I think you are right.

 

[FireCat]

How likely is it that my entire hard disk is wiped on both my home computer, the computer of my girlfriend and my laptop?

But there's still a small chance it can happen. So tell me, what you gonna do then?

 

[Accname]

But there's still a small chance it can happen. So tell me, what you gonna do then?

I make another email address and send a mail to thehelper and tell him what happened probably.

Or i just make another account. I dont know, i dont care.

 

[FireCat]

He But I don't Just talk about the The helper.
But overall

 

[Accname]

He But I don't Just talk about the The helper.
But overall

Like what? Passwords for other forums?
Same answer.

And as i said, i have backups of all important data (of which i have little) on remote hard drives and dropbox. I have nothing to lose, even this "important" data is nothing that cannot be recreated.

 

[FireCat]

And as i said, i have backups of all important data (of which i have little) on remove hard drives and dropbox. I have nothing to lose, even this "important" data is nothing that cannot be recreated.

Well okay, good luck with that.