We already know that the PlayStation 3 can do a variety of things such as watching Blu-ray movies and playing music, but one thing that it wasn't intended to do but is capable of is cracking passwords.

Nick Breese, a New Zealand-based security researcher has claimed that he can crack passwords 100 times faster than Intel hardware.

"Eight-character 'strong' passwords can be broken in a couple of days whereas before it would take weeks,” said Breese.

When it comes to "brute force" cracking, speed is everything since it relies on guessing every single combination of letters and numbers to crack a password. Widely used ciphers such as the 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), used to protect online banking transactions, remain safe. "It'll speed up the attacks but I can't see that it's broken," Breese says.

The chip that the PS3 uses is optimized to rapidly perform calculations that are needed to model the 3D environments, which makes it perfect for cracking passwords.

Excerpts from Nick Breese's presentation can be heard in Patrick Gray's podcast here.

Source: theage