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PlayStation 3 'Hacker's Paradise', Sales Up

Posted by Zonk on from the probably-unrelated dept.

Via Game|Life, a story on The Age site suggests that password crackers are really enjoying their PlayStation 3s ... and not because Ratchet is a great game. An NZ-based security researcher stated at a local security conference that the supercomputing power of the PS3 is being put to more nefarious uses than Folding@home. "Speed is important to "brute force" password cracking, which relies on guessing all possible combinations of the characters that make up the password. The accelerated technique means passwords protecting Office, PDF, ZIP and Lotus Notes ID files can be cracked with breathtaking speed. However, many other password types are handled more securely in software and remain unaffected by Breese's claimed speed increase." Sony does have some good news this week, though. Either the holiday season or a price drop here in the states has led to a massive sales increase.

3 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Most Powerful and Open Console yet? by powerlord · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Okay, so basically this article says that the PS3 is the most powerful and open console of this generation and people keep digging at Sony?

    At this point its mostly meme. I tried the Wii again last Thanksgiving. Yeah both my nephews have one, but they also had a Gamecube so to them it was the logical extension, but I just don't see what all the hype was about.

    The controls were sloppy and trying to use the Wii-mote as a pointer was painful as heck.

    --
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  2. Nick Breese's Presentation by this+great+guy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't been able to find the presentation that Nick Breese gave at Kiwicon. It's not on kiwicon.org, it's not on the websites with which he is associated. However I found a 10 min of audio recording excerpt of his presentation on this podcast (between 9:38 and 21:06).

  3. Re:Botnets for Cracking Maybe? by tmasky · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Heya, Nick B here..

    The above author made a very valid point =)

    However, in the initial "grand scheme of things", Sony wanted Cell processors in every piece of consumer electronics to create a sort-of distributed computing model within your home. More processors and more potential entry points. Who knows if that'll still happen.

    In any case, the point I've been trying to make is that vector processors can do crypto very well. The Cell's SPUs are just a very good example of that. Who knows what other vector processors could be used..

    I want to apologise for the lack of technical detail available. I absolutely hate it when I read a news piece and can't find further info. The media piece came out of a pre-release talk I did at the Kiwicon security conference.

    The full presentation will (hopefully) be done at some international security conference. All technical information and source code will be made available then. No software patents are involved ;)