Last October, much ink was spilled regarding GPU password cracking. With GPU password cracking, the work is offloaded to the video cards Graphics Processing Unit. Due to the nature of the GPU, password cracking can occur at speeds previously only seen by people with a lot of computers working together.
Recently InsidePro makers of SamInside, released the Extreme GPU Bruteforcer. I love SamInside so I had work buy a GeForce 8800 GT video card and a copy of Extreme GPU Bruteforcer.
There were a couple of false starts. Not being much of a hardware guy, I made the mistake of not considering the power needs of a high end card. I upgraded my power supply, installed the new video card and began cracking.
Previously bruteforcing on my computer chugged along at 6.6 million passwords per second. With the new setup, I'm checking NTLM passwords at approximately 324.75 million passwords per second. If my math is correct, that means for a 8 character password that could have uppers, lowers or numbers, it would now take almost 8 days instead of taking 382 days. Not bad for less than $300 including the new power supply.
Hi Roger
Interesting mechanic. I suppose this could also be dubbed a password checker. It could be run through an organization to check for weak user passwords with increased speed.