Nvidia's flagship gaming GPU can crack complex passwords in under an hour
The best graphics cards are great for gaming but can also help crack passwords. Hive Systems, a cybersecurity solution provider, has released the 2024 edition of its Hive Systems Password Table and some additional studies detailing how long it takes different Nvidia graphics cards to crack a password.
Unlike other studies where firms used AI to crack passwords, Hive Systems' approach is based on hashes. Hashing consists of scrambling the password into an enigmatic combination of letters and numbers. Servers store passwords in the form of hashes, so even if a hacker steals the database, they see the hashes, not the actual password. Hackers play around with different combinations of characters, hashing them and comparing them to stolen databases with password hashes to look for matches.
A computer is sufficient to perform hashing, but graphics cards, such as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 or the A100, can accelerate the process substantially. Hive Systems utilized Hashcat, a hashing software, to benchmark the time required to crack different passwords. Unlike previous iterations of its research centered around MD5 hashing, Hive System included results with bcrypt, which is a more complicated password hashing algorithm to break than MD5.
