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US Government Using PS3s To Break Encryption

Posted by timothy on from the purchase-order-shenanigans dept.

Entropy98 writes "It seems that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, known as C3, has replaced its '$8,000 Tableau/Dell server combination' with more efficient and much cheaper $300 PS3s. Each PS3 is capable of 4 million passwords per second, and C3 currently has 20 PS3s with plans to buy 40 more. Naturally this is only being used to break encryption on computers seized with a warrant and suspected of harboring child pornography."

7 of 570 comments (clear)

  1. Is this April 1st? by commodore64_love · · Score: 0, Troll

    Wait. (goes back to re-read). They are using videogame consoles to run their server? Seriously??? Wow.
    I guess the PS3 is more powerful than I realized; maybe I ought to go buy one. Any good games (not on Xbox) for the PS3?

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    1. Re:Is this April 1st? by commodore64_love · · Score: 0, Troll

      P.S.

      How ironic that the U.S. Cyber Crime unit is breaking U.S. Law to accomplish their goal (modding the hardware and installing Linux). Hmmm. But I doubt Sony or anybody else will file suit. They don't want to go after a big target like the United States government.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. Re:What by commodore64_love · · Score: -1, Troll

    Just curious: ...how does one encrypt files with a password? Any free software available for that task?

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  3. Re:Nice move Sony by Reikk · · Score: -1, Troll

    Linux sucked on PS3. It had no 3D acceleration, little/no support for the controller, could only access like 200 megs of the RAM, couldn't access all of the processors, no flash, couldn't align the image right on monitors, and so on. It was useless. Good riddance.

  4. Re:What by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Fuck off, TripMaster Monkey. Seriously. You clearly know nothing about computer security and encryption, and even less about what the government is doing in this case.

  5. This is important people, it's for CHILD PORN by BigHungryJoe · · Score: 0, Troll

    Can we waive the Constitution and give these brave law enforcement folks a billion trillion dollars to buy PS3's? This is about fighting CHILD PORN.

    Child porn is almost as big a threat as terrorism. ALMOST.

  6. Re:What by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    the spouting of ignorant nonsense makes you suspect that OP is not American?

    hilarity.