PS3 Can Hack Passwords

[MirandaMW87]

Originally Posted by Nextgeneration.com

BLOG—Security researcher Nick Breese recently released his findings that the PS3 is perfect for hackers, cracking codes and passwords 100 times more quickly than previously possible.
Oh those important little files on your computer, the ones containing all that precious information that you keep safely locked away under encryption code and passkey. No one could penetrate your fortress of security with that eight-character password, right? Of course not. That is, unless they are handy with a PS3.

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New Zealand-based security researcher Nick Breese recently announced at the Kiwicon hacker conference in Wellington, New Zealand, his research findings regarding the possibility of utilizing Sony’s Playstation 3 to crack passwords . According to Breese the console can be used to crack passwords at speeds up to 100 times greater than the current best speeds of Intel hardware.

His findings indicate that, when using a PS3, “eight-character ‘strong’ passwords can be broken in a couple of days whereas before it would take weeks.” This type of “brute force” cracking, where a computer guesses all possible combinations of characters in a password until it hits on the right one, can make cracking passwords protected files such as Office, PDF, ZIP and Lotus Notes ID files far easier than ever before.

Don’t worry though, many other passwords types like those used to protect online banking transactions are still mostly secure. Says Breese, these widely used ciphers like the 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) are “still safe because the people implementing the ciphers foresaw CPU power rapidly increasing.”

Phew, banking is safe from the clutches of PS3 processing power. But why is the PS3 such an ideal addition to a hacker’s arsenal? It’s those dang chips. Apparently, “the chips it uses are optimized to rapidly perform the calculations required to model 3-D environments,” a computing technique similar to cracking passwords.

The best part about this hacking tool? It’s so cheap. Sure you can use a string of hefty powerful computers to break some codes, but relatively speaking the PS3 is cheaper and more easily found, especially if you need to hook up more than one to quickly break a code.

Ah, finally password hacking on any budget.

oops

[QueenB]

*goes to buy a hacktastic Ps3*

At last, a reason to buy a PS3

[Momma Bear]

I'll wait. I think I will eventually get a PS3 but it is far, far down on my list. But hacking with a PS3.....nice.