Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Extrapolating Current Trends
The beginning of our computer security journey was the introduction of passwords for multi-user operating systems,
so it is interesting to see that 50 years later we are still stuck with passwords. But how has password-cracking
technology evolved?
GPU-Supported Password Cracking
In terms of straight password-hash brute forcing, there have been some gains in processing power though the use of
video card GPUs (graphical processing units). CUDA is the Nvidia API for enabling a command-line program to also
utilize the onboard graphics CPUs (there is also an ATI GPU library called AGS that is equivalent). I predicted in 2009
that there would be a CUDA Oracle password cracker in the near future. You can read my prediction in the following
blog entry:
And here comes the realization of that prediction in the form of a GPU-based password-guessing utility
called Hashcat. You can download it from
http://hashcat.net/
. The CUDA software is available with installation
instructions from the following URL:
Depending on your Linux subscription, the following repository setting may be useful for free RPMS needed
during installation of Hashcat:
[root@localhost ~]# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/centos.repo
Change the 5 to 6 if needed.
[centos]
name=CentOS $releasever - $basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
