Apart from gaming and AI, Hive Systems shows that complex passwords are no match for top GPUs such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
NVIDIA's Modern-Day GPUs Such as The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU Is Capable Of Decrypting Hashed-Passwords, Credits To Their FLOPS Count
You can't just go out and get access to anyone's password with your gaming GPUs since it isn't that easy. Hive Systems uses a hashing mechanism to ensure the integrity of passwords out there. For those unaware, hashing is a security measure that involves transforming passwords into a unique string of characters called a hash. This ensures that your data doesn't get interpreted by an intruder directly and is a one-way function. Hive Systems measured how long individual GPUs take to decrypt the hashed passwords, and the results disclosed are indeed interesting.
This time, Hive Systems decided to use a different hashing algorithm, the bcrypt, which is a superior version of what the company had previously been utilizing. The firm decided to compare bcrypt with the older MD5 hashing function to see how both of them stack against each other, and for initial testing, Hive System used an 8-character, and here are the results.
As you can see above, with MD5, it took NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 an hour to crack the password, and shockingly, 10,000 units of NVIDIA's A100s only took one second. MD5 looks to be an inferior hashing function, compared to bcrypt, and the testing done by Hive Systems on it validates our point since the time it took to crack down passwords at bcrypt was quite higher than MD5.
From one second, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 now took a whopping 99 years to interpret the password with bcrypt, which shows that how strong bcrypt is in this department. It's important to note that cracking passwords isn't your everyday work, and firms have implemented several security layers apart from just hashing functions to ensure that your data is safe. Regardless of that, it's still interesting to see the benchmarks by Hive Systems.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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