Hackers could potentially use the PS3's power, to hack your phat lewt!

[SinisterDeath]

The powerful chip at the heart of Sony's PlayStation gaming console has been used to crack passwords faster than ever before.

Security researcher Nick Breese used a PS3 to crack supposedly strong eight-character passwords in hours.

 

Typically, previous attempts to crack such passwords took days to get the same result.

 

Eight-character passwords are used to protect PDF and Zip files as well as those produced by Microsoft Office.

 

The work to turn the PS3 into a password cracker was carried out by Nick Breese, who works for Auckland-based Security Assessment.

 

The Cell processor at the heart of the PS3 is the key to speeding up the time it takes to crack a password.

 

In a presentation given at the Kiwicon security conference in mid-November, Mr Breese said a powerful Intel chip could crank through 10-15 million cycles per second.

 

The architecture of the Cell processor meant it could speed through 1.4 billion cycles per second. This speed boost was possible because each Cell chip had several processing cores - each one of which could be effectively trying passwords at the same time.

 

This was important when attempting "brute force" attacks that go through all possible combinations for a password.

 

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Breese said although the PS3 could be used to crack eight-character passwords featuring letters and numbers, stronger encryption systems - such as those used to safeguard web transactions - remained safe.

 

Mr Breese's research comes soon after work by Russian company Elcomsoft to use graphics cards to speed up password cracking.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7118997.stm

 

So far, the ps3 has been used by the military to launch missles, calculate the trajectory, and a bunch of other military related stuff. Used as a 'big brother' system, Saved a mans life. And now, hackers can use it for hacking yer 8 letter/number passwords in only hours!

 

So far, the Wii, is just training potential super soldiers, the 360 is training jocks into smashing each others heads. And the PS3 is being put to do all the work that would blow up the other two systems plans for world domination...

But the real question?

Can the PS3 destroy google, when it attempts to take over the world? I know the Nintendo Fanboi super soldiers, would put up a fight, but how will PS3 hold up against Google.com Missles? Or G-phone? Or, G-Military? Or Google Super Computer?

[Cadsuane]

*looks suspiciously at Sin*

 

*quickly resets all passwords to more complicated combos*

 

;D

[SinisterDeath]

*looks suspiciously at Sin*

 

*quickly resets all passwords to more complicated combos*

 

;D

 

 

Don't worry, I won't steal your $600 income per month. I'd rather go after bill gates. ;)

[Samuraiflip05]

That's just nutty.