Use a PS3 to crack passwords

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 29 November 2007 02:13

Your IT - Entertainment

What is a cell processor good for?  Hacking passwords of course, The Sony PS3 has been out for a year, as a gaming console and/or High Definition Blu-ray player has been moderately successful.

But maybe your technology needs are broader.

According to a report in The Age, New Zealand security researcher Nick Breese has harnessed the processing power of the PlayStation 3 to hack passwords.

Using the tried and true method of ‘brute force’ password cracking, Breese claims the PS3 is a cheaper alternative to the usual high powered equipment normally employed. 

Simply put, 'brute force' involves throwing combinations of words and characters at the password dialogue.

"Suddenly we have a massive increase in terms of . . . cryptography cracking.  Eight-character 'strong' passwords can be broken in a couple of days whereas before it would take weeks." Breese said.

PlayStation 3 can also be used to break basic encryption schemes, Breese says, although widely used ciphers such as the 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), used to protect online banking transactions, remain safe. "It'll speed up the attacks but I can't see that it's broken," he says. "(It) is still safe because the people implementing the ciphers foresaw CPU power rapidly increasing."

The gaming console is perfect for cracking passwords because the chips it uses are optimised to rapidly perform the calculations required to model 3-D environments. The computing techniques used to crack passwords are similar.

Breese hopes his research encourages software-makers to beef up their password security. "That's the reason I'm doing this," he says.

So whilst there may not an abundance of compelling gaming titles on the market at the moment, there is still plenty of fun to be had with your PS3. Not that we would encourage anyone to have fun this way of course.