GPU Password Hacking

Have you ever tried brute-force attacking a password with a CPU? Then you probably know that when you get up to more characters with symbols, letters, and numbers, it could theoretically take hundreds of years to break the password. Well, GPUs seam to be beating CPUs in this game. There are many GPU hacking utilities out there, but this one fast, according to reports. Dubbed “ighashgpu,” this program is astoundingly fast.

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.

The supported GPUs for ATI are, according to the website, the “HD RV7X0 and RV830/870. Which means – 4550, 4670, 4830, 4730, 4770, 4850, 4870, 4890, 5750, 5770, 5850, 5870, 5970.” NVIDIA cards are limited to CUDA-supporting cards only. If you’re interested in giving this a try, download the program here. The version talked about here was the hash version. There’s also a RAR version and an Office version. Links can be gotten from the main website.