Security researcher Nick Breese used a PS3 to crack supposedly strong eight-character passwords in a matter of 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.
[ Via BBC News ]
RELATED : A project that harnesses the spare processing power of Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) to help understand the cause of diseases has entered the record books.
Microsoft has now revealed that they are acquiring the assets of Seattle based internet company WebFives.
The financial aspects of the deal have not been disclosed by the two parties.
Founder of the company Michael Toutonghi would now join Microsoft. He said about this deal: “I am happy with the outcome.”
WebFives enables the members to share videos, photos and other Web content between mobile devices.
Microsoft would now incorporate the technology provided by this acquisition in their own web based services. WebFives will be shut down by the end of this year.
The producers of An Inconvenient Truth offered American classrooms up to 50,000 copies of their movie for free but they were rejected over fears that it would piss off Exxon-Mobil, one of the National Science Teachers Association biggest supporters.
In their e-mail rejection, they (NSTA) expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs.
Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film’s theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.
Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.”
One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.
