hacking

article about using gpu's for hacking passwords...seemed appropriate since there seems to be a hack at some major company every other day...

passwords that are case sensitive and 16 characters (symbols and numbers included) would help...although the program would still be able to get the hash value, it would take a very long time and would not be worth the wait...however, this can be an issue as processors get faster since you would need even longer passwords

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/cheap-gpus-are-rendering-strong-passwords-useless/13125

Take a cheap GPU (like the Radeon HD 5770) and the free GPU-powered password busting tool called ’ighashgpu‘ and you have yourself a lean, mean password busting machine. How lean and mean? Very:

The results are startling. Working against NTLM login passwords, a password of “fjR8n” can be broken on the CPU in 24 seconds, at a rate of 9.8 million password guesses per second. On the GPU, it takes less than a second at a rate of 3.3 billion passwords per second.

Increase the password to 6 characters (pYDbL6), and the CPU takes 1 hour 30 minutes versus only four seconds on the GPU. Go further to 7 characters (fh0GH5h), and the CPU would grind along for 4 days, versus a frankly worrying 17 minutes 30 seconds for the GPU.

It gets worse. Throw in a nine-character, mixed-case random password, and while a CPU would take a mind-numbing 43 years to crack this, the GPU would be done in 48 days.