Is there really such a thing as “unbreakable” encryption?

Russian-based ‘password recovery’ company Elcomsoft has pressed the GPU into the service of password cracking.

While this may be small stuff compared to the ‘Storm Worm’ network, which potentially might have millions of compromised Windows PCs at its disposal, this puts brute-force password cracking within easy reach of the masses… which simply reinforces the fact that NOTHING on your computer is ever really completely ’safe’.

(Via ArsTechnica & TechRepublic)

Russian company Elcomsoft has released a new version of its flagship Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery software that leverages on GPU hardware acceleration to crack Windows NTLM passwords up to 25 times faster than previously possible using the highest-end desktop PC.

Elcomsoft’s new password cracker attacks the NTLM hashing that Windows uses with a brute force method. The company claims that its GPU-powered attack speeds up the time it takes to crack a Vista password from two months to a little over three days.

Elcomsoft claims that they’ve filed for a US patent on this approach, but it’s not clear what exactly they’re attempting to patent. A search of the USPTO’s patent database turned up nothing, but that could be because the patent hasn’t made it into the database yet.

Elcomsoft has announced that it will be incorporating this patent-pending technology into its entire family of enterprise password recovery applications, using up to four separate video cards that are supported by high-end PC motherboards.

See the Elcomsoft Press Release here.

See original TechRepublic Article - Graphics card cracks passwords 25 times faster by Paul Mah.

See original ArsTechnica article - Russian crackers throw GPU power at passwords by Jon Stokes.