PS3 Is Great At Hacking!
Well, you knew Sony's machine had to be good for something, right?
Kidding... kidding...
Seriously, Nick Breese, a senior security consultant at Security-assesment.com has discovered that the PS3's unique cell processor technology can crack passwords like nobody's business. Sony always touted the cell processor's ability to perform multiple calculations and all that, so I guess it's no surprise that it makes for speedy hacking.
By design, PS3 is very suitable for cryptography, says Breese. Intel processors are designed to do all kinds of complex calculations, whereas the PS3 is good at doing simple things very quickly. "And believe it or not, cryptography really is simple," he says. "Lots of simple operations being done one at the time."
Of course, being that he works in security, he conducted this research to prove that using Intel processors as a benchmark for computing power isn't enough with newer chips out there than can outperform the old ones. He's not the bad guy, he's just proving what bad guys can do. (Don't get any ideas, please!)
The whole article is way too technical for me, and my eyes started glazing over as I read about MD5 calculations and SIMD computing, but they won me back when at the end they revealed that Breese claimed that "the initial reason for embarking on the research project was to get the company to buy him a PS3." Guy's a genius! (Now, if only I could figure out a way to convince my boss I need PS3 for my job...)
Hacker Uses Sony PlayStation 3 to Crack Passwords [PC World]
