Fergie's Tech Blog

'Crackstation' Uses Game Console for Hacking

A ComputerWorld Australia article by Ulrika Hedquist, via PC World, reports that:

Nick Breese, a senior security consultant at Auckland, Australia-based Security-assessment.com, has come up with a way to drastically increase the processing capability of cracking passwords.

By implementing common ciphers and hash functions using vector computing, Breese has pushed the current upper limit of 10--15 million cycles per second -- in Intel-based architecture -- up to 1.4 billion cycles per second.

Breese, who has been working on the project, called "Crackstation", for the past six months, used the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console for his break-through research. PS3's Cell Broadband Engine technology was created by IBM, Toshiba and Sony.

posted by Fergie @ 11/28/2007 08:49:00 AM