Can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 crack your password in minutes?

Of course, you can't go out and access anyone's passwords with your gaming GPU. Hive Systems uses a hashing mechanism to ensure password integrity. If you don't know, hashing is a security measure that involves converting a password into a unique string of characters called a hash. This ensures that your data is not directly decrypted by intruders and is a one-way function. Hive Systems tried measuring how long it took individual GPUs to decrypt hashed passwords, and the results revealed are really interesting.

In this test, Hive Systems decided to use a different hash algorithm: Bcrypt. This is a superior version of the algorithms the company has used before. Hive Systems decided to compare bcrypt with the older MD5 hash function to see how both functions stack up against each other. In initial testing, Hive System used 8 characters 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 incredibly it took NVIDIA's 10,000 A100s just a second to perform the same task. on one's own. MD5 seems to be a worse hash function than bcrypt because testing conducted by Hive Systems has shown that the time needed to crack a password at bcrypt is much higher than MD5.

From one second, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 now took up to 99 years to decrypt a password encrypted with bcrypt, which shows the remarkable power of the new algorithm that Hive Systems is implementing.

Of course, cracking passwords isn't your everyday job, and companies have implemented several layers of security beyond hashing to ensure your data stays safe. Regardless, Hive Systems testing has shown how exciting it is to apply the power of GPUs to password cracking.

Lesley Montoya

Update 03 May 2024