Galt's Gulch

25-GPU cluster cracks every standard Windows password in <6 hours | Ars Technica

Posted by UncommonSense 10 years, 3 months ago to Technology
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Got an 8-character password comprised of upper case, lower case, symbols & numbers? Think you're secure? No problem, they'll crack it in under 6 hours.

Keep in mind this article is over a year old, so, I'm guessing they can do it in under 4 minutes. All my passwords are minimum 13 characters, & yes, I include the spacebar.

This is FYSA.
SOURCE URL: http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-cracks-every-standard-windows-password-in-6-hours/

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  • Posted by cp256 10 years, 3 months ago
    While the 25 GPU cluster is impressive, the key ingredient in the hack is to have access to the hashed passwords and associated usernames, which is virtually impossible in most situations where network admins take security seriously. I have been running internet connected unix servers for a couple of decades and the lawless bastiges have been banging at the doors that whole time.

    For the past year I have been used several GPUs to fold proteins (folding@home) and I'm very impressed with their ability to do certain kinds of work compared with a normal computer's CPU, even very powerful ones, which I also use. The game will dramatically change when quantum computing becomes available. They'll be like the Marines, the difficult they will do immediately and the impossible will take a little longer.
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    • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 3 months ago
      Okay now you have to elaborate... what's "folding proteins"?
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      • Posted by jbaker 10 years, 3 months ago
        folding@home is awesome, you should check it out. It is a distributed computing solution to the difficult problem of finding the various ways that proteins can fold in a stable way. It is like the distributed distributed SETI project in conception although a completely different problem domain.

        Why are we interested in how proteins fold? Medicine.
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        • Posted by cp256 10 years, 3 months ago
          Some people do it as an excuse to run their fast computers flat out, albeit for a good cause. I have used it to stress test my fastest liquid cooled and overclocked single processor (four cores at the time) machine with high performance GPUs. It ran continuously at full blast for four months. I put its motherboard and processor into a Christmas present for my wife and will rebuild it with higher performance components shortly. It really did blast a pile of heat out of its back end, about 850 watts worth. I also fold with three custom four processor servers full time, two with 24 cores and one with 48 cores. I'm closing in on the top 200 out of 1.4M in the world. It's hardly objectivist and does cost some money, but I enjoy doing it. It's a tax writeoff for my business so it doesn't hurt too much. The wife thinks I'm nuts...
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 3 months ago
    The answer lies in obfuscation.
    Bury the data you want in a bunch of unrelated nonsense data, encrypting all of it.

    Then have the actual data secured somewhere else.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 3 months ago
      That was basically the method used by the military in the past (perhaps still, since I got out in 1990 I don't have any recent knowledge). Essentially what was done was a random noise generator created static. This static was used to encrypt the data (voice, text, fax, etc.). Since the user at the other end had the same generated noise, they could decrypt the data. I think that's the end answer to this - everyone will have a key fob or such that will have their unique encryption cypher.
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