Password cracking, mining, and GPUs

People imagine that sophisticated hacking requires sophisticated computers. The truth is that almost everything a hacker does can be done with a cheap notebook computer, or even a mobile phone.

The major exception is password cracking, and related crypto tasks like bitcoin mining and certificate forgery. In these cases, a minor investment in hardware can be warranted.

In particular, those who need to crack passwords (pen-testers, sysadmins, hackers) should buy a gaming graphics card in order to speed up cracking. Or, when buying notebooks for pen-testing, they should choose those with graphics processors.

/>http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/06/password-cracking-mining-and-gpus.html

Ted.

wouch nice article loved it thx Ted

Thanks man

I do bitcoin mining, I have a rig setup with 3 x 6990's(6 GPU's) and the heat generated is amazing, Im even using a box fan to help with the cooling as the stock fans just don't do the job, It runs 24/7 and GPU's sit around 80-85 degree's Celsius, IT cost me a bit to set up around $3500 AUD but its fun to experiment and make a little pocket money doing it... currently generating around 2400 MH/s which is not bad for a single box... I have seen some people have 24 of these boxes setup for bitcoin mining. If your thinking of setting up such a thing, keep in mind you will not make your money back is the difficulty gets harder and harder every 2 weeks so there is no "Profit" to be made, instead its just an interesting project..

I would imagine your electricity bill would start to outweigh the cost of mining at some point...

Ted.