ElcomSoft uses NVIDIA GPUs to speed up WPA/WPA2 brute-force attack
Russian security firm ElcomSoft has released software that leverages NVIDIA GPUs to speed up the brute-force cracking of WPA and WPA2 pre-shared WiFi keys.
Russian security firm ElcomSoft has released software that leverages NVIDIA GPUs to speed up the brute-force cracking of WPA and WPA2 pre-shared WiFi keys.
ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. accelerates the recovery of WPA and WPA2 encryption used in the Wi-Fi protocol by employing the new-generation NVIDIA video cards. ElcomSoft patent-pending GPU acceleration technology implemented in Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery allows using laptop, desktop or server computers equipped with supported NVIDIA video cards to break Wi-Fi encryption up to 100 times faster than by using CPU only.
Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery supports both WPA and the newer WPA2 encryption used in the majority of Wi-Fi networks, allowing breaking Wi-Fi protection quickly and efficiently with most laptop and desktop computers. The support of NVIDIA graphic accelerators increases the recovery speed by an average of 10 to 15 times when Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery is used on a moderate laptop with NVIDIA GeForce 8800M or 9800M series GPU, or up to 100 times when running on a desktop with two or more NVIDIA GTX 280 boards installed. Governments, forensic and corporate users will benefit from vastly increased speed of breaking Wi-Fi protection provided by Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery.
Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery does more than WiFi passwords - you also get the ability to crack a number of documents and files such as Microsoft Office, PGP, ZIP, PDF, OpenDocument, and a number of others.
The power of Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery is down to its distributed nature.
Prices start at $499 for 20 clients, going up to $4,199 for 2,500+ clients.
Reality check time. Even a 100x speed increase isn't all that remarkable. If you're using sub 6 to 8 character passwords/passphrases, and you're leaving them in place for months (or years) at a time then you need to be worried. If you're using long pre-shared keys consisting of uppercase, lowercase, digits and common punctuation, you're still very safe.
For example, a 15 character password made up of uppercase, lowercase, digits and common punctuation is highly resistant to a brute-force attack. Even at the rate of 100,000,000 password attempts a second, cracking that could take 3.5 x 1012 years.
Note: Compare this to a 5 character password consisting of uppercase, lowercase, digits and common punctuation. Even at the modest rate of 50,000 password attempts a second, this could be cracked in about 13 hours!
Whether your system is resistant to this kind of attack really depends on the quality of your passphrase.
Verizon's
first
quarter
showed
revenue
growth
and
a
lot
of
moving
parts
including
better
prospects
on
business
accounts,
competition
for
consumers
and
video
losses
that
were
offset
...
Online
stores
and
ecommerce
are
on
the
rise.
The
best
ecommerce
website
builder
is
one
that
helps
you
reach
customers
without
sacrificing
your
brand
vision.
...
Adversaries
are
turning
their
focus
towards
cheaper,
easier
targets
within
an
organisation's
supply
chain,
especially
as
businesses
increasingly
acquire
software
from
external
...
Following
a
decline
in
its
smartphone
business,
Chinese
tech
giant
is
looking
to
its
other
connected
devices
including
laptops
and
smart
TVs
to
fill
the
gaps,
and
believes
its
wide
...
Join Discussion