Password Cracking with a Graphics Card
It's easy to forget how computationally powerful some graphics cards are. They create near realistic renderings of objects and it turns out their good for password cracking, too. New Scientist is reporting that Elcomsoft, a Moscow based software company, has filed for a US patent on a technique to radically improve the speed of password cracking using off the shelf video cards like nVidia's GeForce 8800.
Using an $800 graphics card from nVidia called the GeForce 8800 Ultra, Elcomsoft increased the speed of its password cracking by a factor of 25, according to the company's CEO, Vladimir Katalov.The toughest passwords, including those used to log in to a Windows Vista computer, would normally take months of continuous computer processing time to crack using a computer's central processing unit (CPU). By harnessing a $150 GPU - less powerful than the nVidia 8800 card - Elcomsoft says they can cracked in just three to five days. Less complex passwords can be retrieved in minutes, rather than hours or days.
Faster processors, bigger botnets, and now graphics cards. Cybercrime is developing quite a tool chest.
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