Elcomsoft trying to patent faster GPU-based password cracker

From:

   <http://w
ww.elcomsoft.com/EDPR/gpu_en.pdf>

  Moscow, Russia - October 22, 2007 - ElcomSoft Co. Ltd.
has
  discovered and filed for a US patent...Using the
"brute force"
  technique of recovering passwords, it was possible,
though
  time-consuming, to recover passwords from popular
  applications. For example...Windows Vista uses NTLM
hashing
  by default, so using a modern dual-core PC you could test
up to
  10,000,000 passwords per second, and perform a complete
  analysis in about two months. With ElcomSoft's new
technology,
  the process would take only three to five days..Today's
[GPU]
  chips can process fixed-point calculations. And with as
much as
  1.5 Gb of onboard video memory and up to 128 processing
  units, these powerful GPU chips are much more effective
than
  CPUs in performing many of these
calculations...Preliminary
  tests using Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery
product
  to recover Windows NTLM logon passwords show that the
  recovery speed has increased by a factor of twenty, simply
by
  hooking up with a $150 video card's onboard GPU.

-Michael Heyman

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On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:25:29 -0400
"mheymangmail.com" <mheymangmail.com> wrote:

> From:
> 
>    <http://w
ww.elcomsoft.com/EDPR/gpu_en.pdf>
> 
>   Moscow, Russia - October 22, 2007 - ElcomSoft Co.
Ltd. has
>   discovered and filed for a US patent...Using the
"brute force"
>   technique of recovering passwords, it was possible,
though
>   time-consuming, to recover passwords from popular
>   applications. For example...Windows Vista uses NTLM
hashing
>   by default, so using a modern dual-core PC you could
test up to
>   10,000,000 passwords per second, and perform a
complete
>   analysis in about two months. With ElcomSoft's new
technology,
>   the process would take only three to five
days..Today's [GPU]
>   chips can process fixed-point calculations. And with
as much as
>   1.5 Gb of onboard video memory and up to 128
processing
>   units, these powerful GPU chips are much more
effective than
>   CPUs in performing many of these
calculations...Preliminary
>   tests using Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery
product
>   to recover Windows NTLM logon passwords show that
the
>   recovery speed has increased by a factor of twenty,
simply by
>   hooking up with a $150 video card's onboard GPU.
> 
I hope they don't get the patent.  The idea of using a GPU
for
cryptographic calculations isn't new; see, for example,
"Remotely Keyed
Cryptographics: Secure Remote Display Access Using (Mostly)
Untrusted
Hardware" (http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~angelos/Papers/2005/
rkey_icics.pdf)
Debra L. Cook, Ricardo Baratto, and Angelos D. Keromytis.
In
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on
Information and
Communications Security (ICICS), pp. 363 - 375. December
2005, Beijing,
China. An older version is available as Columbia University
Computer
Science Department Technical Report CUCS-050-04
(http://mice.cs.columbia.edu/ge
tTechreport.php?techreportID=110&format=pdf&),
December 2004.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbi
a.edu/~smb

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