Posts Tagged ‘GPU acceleration’
Friday, December 24th, 2010
If you have read our recent Cracking BlackBerry Backup Passwords article, you should be familiar with encryption implemented in BlackBerry Desktop Software. Just reminding:
In short, standard key-derivation function, PBKDF2, is used in a very strange way, to say the least. Where Apple has used 2’000 iterations in iOS 3.x, and 10’000 iterations in iOS 4.x, BlackBerry uses only one.
So password verification is (was) so fast/simple that we did not care about implementing it on the GPU — modern CPU is able to crack almost 8 million passwords per second (thanks to multi-threading and AES-NI). We would not call that the vulnerability, but still the weak link.
But new versions of BlackBerry Desktop Software have been released reсently (6.0 for Windows and 2.0 for Mac). And as always, there are bad news and there are good news.
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Tags: BlackBerry, Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, EPPB, GPU acceleration, PBKDF2, Vulnerability
Posted in Cryptography, Elcom-News | No Comments »
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
Most modern CPUs are multi-core – it is not easy to find even a laptop with less than two cores these days. And for desktops, 4 cores are usual now.
Password recovery is one of most CPU-intensive tasks, and it fits best into multi-processor architecture. Every CPU (or CPU core) get its own portion of passwords to try (i.e. to check their validness), and they all work in parallel. As simple as that.
So what we’re doing in our software is running multiple threads – as many as the number of CPUs (or cores) available. And the rest is being done by the operating system, that assigns the threads to cores (well, in most cases we don’t care what particular core is going to execute a particular thread, because they are all equal; the only exception is when one or more of the cores is doing something already, I mean something CPU-intensive as well).
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Tags: AES-NI, BlackBerry, Core i7-970, GPU acceleration, Hyper-threading, Intel
Posted in Cryptography, Elcom-News, General, Hardware, Software | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Some time ago we wrote about the smallest password cracking device. Not suitable for you? No problem, here is another one: not as small, but definitely more powerfull: Audi. Yes, it's a car. No, we're not kidding. Just read NVIDIA and Audi Marry Silicon Valley Technology with German Engineering press release from NVIDIA. Or if you need more information, The New MMI Generation from Audi might be also helpful. In brief: Audi A8 luxury sedan is equipped with an entertainment system that uses two GPUs from NVIDIA. We have no idea what are these chips (may be Fermi?) and is it technically possible to load our own code to them, but still funny, isn't it? 
Tags: Audi, GPU, GPU acceleration, Nvidia
Posted in Hardware, Industry News | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
Looking for new password cracking hardware (to take advantage of GPU acceleration)? Wait just a little bit more: new ATI and NVIDIA cards (with DirectX 11) will be available soon.
ATI is going to release Radeon HD 5000 cards (5850, 5870, 5870 X2) in October — well, hopefully. The top one (HD 5870X2: single-PCB, dual-GPU) will retail for $599.
As for NVIDIA’s new GT300, the specifications were revealed in April. In brief, it groups processing cores in sets of 32 (up from 24 in GT200) — up to 512 cores total for the high-end part. If the clocks remain the same as on GT200, that will double the overall performance. And there are other improvements as well: e.g. GT300 cores rely on MIMD-similar functions. Some fresh information about GT300 availability:
You may ask — what about Intel? Well, new Core i5 and i7 (codename Lynnfield) now available. Nothing revolutionary new, just Intel P55 Express Chipset support: integrating both a 16-lane PCI Express 2 graphics port and two-channel memory controller on a single chip (previous chipsets required separate northbridge and southbridge), as well as several minor improvements. More information and some benchmarks at Intel Lynnfield; Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 Evaluation and New Intel Core i5, i7 Processors Product Matrix.
And still [almost] noting about Intel Larrabee, mostly just rumors:
Finally, funny article: NVIDIA to Intel: Your Days Are Numbered :)
Tags: AMD, ATI, GPU, GPU acceleration, Intel, Larrabee, Nvidia, password cracking
Posted in Hardware, Industry News | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Just about two weeks ago, ATI has introduced the fastest GPU yet: FirePro V8750. 800 shader engines, 115.2 GB/s memory bandwidth, 2 GB frame buffer memory (GDDR5), two DisplayPort outputs, one DVI output. Thinking about purchasing it? The cost is as high as $1,800. More details at Tom’s Hardware.
Want to compare ATI with NVIDIA? Then read ATI Stream vs. NVIDIA CUDA – GPGPU computing battle royale. Or you can use our Wireless Security Auditor (which supports cards from both manufacturers) for your own tests.
Tags: AMD, ATI, GPU, GPU acceleration, Nvidia, Wireless Security Auditor
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Wow, Adobe rethinks PDF security. Curious why? Because of vulnerabilities in Abobe Reader (and so zero-day exploits), of course. From the article:
According to Finnish security company F-Secure, patching 48.9% of all targeted attacks conducted this year involved a malicious PDF file attached to a legitimate-looking e-mail, a huge change from 2008, when PDFs made up just 28.6% of targeted attacks.
But security model of PDF encryption/protection is not going to change, [un]fortunately. (more…)
Tags: Acrobat, Adobe, AES, exploits, GPU acceleration, PDF, RC4, vulnerabilities
Posted in Human Factor, Security, Software, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
We wrote about Cost-effective video cards recently, but what about better ones, if the prise does not really matter? Just read Best Of The Best: High-End Graphics Card Roundup at Tom’s Hardware. Large. Expensive. Power-consuming. But really fast — so best choice if you deal with GPU acceleration.
Btw, don’t forget to get a good coller for your new card — like this one.
Tags: ATI, GPU, GPU acceleration, graphic cards, Nvidia, Video Cards
Posted in Hardware, Software | No Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
Tom’s Hardware has tested two mainstream NVIDIA cards (GeForce 9600 GT and GeForce 9800 GTX) on several CUDA-enabled applications. The applications were:
- SETI@home
- CyberLink PowerDirector
- Tsunami MPEG Encoder
- Super LoiLoScope
- Badaboom
(more…)
Tags: AMD, ATI, CUDA, EDPR, EWSA, GPU, GPU acceleration, Nvidia, password cracking, password recovery
Posted in Hardware, Software | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
There is a few, so I’ll put ‘em all into a single blog post
First, Phoenix Technologies announced a program (for Windows XP/Vista) to link mobile phones with computer. But no, this is not about data transfer between the phone and PC. Indeed, this is a security system: walk away from your computer, and it will lock automatically; when the user returns, the program will automatically unlock the system. Of course, using Bluetooth (what else? ). More details on Phoenix Freeze web site.
Second, Researchers take over botnet, grab 56,000 passwords an hour. Actually, this is not a very fresh idea (to steal the passwords using the malware). More important: the researchers found that most users reused passwords for multiple sites. I can guess that there are even some users who have the same passwords for accessing web sites (from pet lovers forum to online banking) and critical business data. So instead of breaking your PGP Disk container (which is really secury, even with our GPU acceleration), someone can just get the password saved by your browser. You’re warned.
And finally, just a funny story: Creative passwords only useful if you can remember them. Btw, how many cats do you have? 
Tags: botnet, GPU acceleration, malware, PGP, phone
Posted in Human Factor, Security, Software | No Comments »