BF2S Forums Playstation 3 clusters used to hack MD5

PS3 is the criminal of the world

Serge did it

damn, can i has one?

Uzique wrote:

I don't really get it...

Bit of a gimmick, no?

Why use several hundred PS3's when any other IT research group would just use a supercomputer?

Sony slipping these guys a few thousand research-funding bucks for the publicity?

Because it's a super cheap way to make a supercomputer.

And the weaknesses of MD5 have been known about for ages.

Uzique wrote:

Is it super-cheap though? I bet you could achieve the same processing and number-crunching power with standard PC components for cheaper.

Come on now, for processing power and hardware-specs, consoles are hardly value-for-money. No one buys an Xbox360 because the processing cores inside compete price-wise with the (rough) Intel/AMD equivalent. If MD5 is such a weak and easily-crackable encryption, I doubt they'd need a multi-billion dollar IBM super-uber-ultra-computer to do it. Hell, I bet Max could turn his ultra-nerdcore folding laboratory into a project like this and crack it faster than any of those Metal Gear Solid 4 hypeboxes.

I don't think you realise how powerful Sony's Cell Processor really is.....

It is super cheap. End of.

No, Max couldn't. PS3s are incredibly powerful pieces of equipment. To give you a perfect example of how powerful consoles are, a proper PS2 emulator for a PC still hasn't been made. Why? Because the processing power is immense. Yes, there is an emulator out there, if you want to play your games at 10FPS. It's not the software.

But the PS2's processor was only 300Mhz...

And I don't get it. What did they do? In laymans terms?

Finray wrote:

But the PS2's processor was only 300Mhz...

And I don't get it. What did they do? In laymans terms?

Nothing. You're right the ps2 doesn't have processing power, Zimmer is wrong on this one. The reason emulators run like shit is because the emulators suck.

The ps3 on the other hand has a little beast inside of it ^^

I'm still not buying the rabid console fanboyism here.

So you're telling me IBM and all the supercomputer researchers have been doing it wrong all along? We didn't need billion dollar number-crunchers, we needed a few PS2's hooked up together or a few N64's in a nice little rack-farm? Lolz. To me the main reason people care about this 'breakthrough' in MD5 security is because it has been performed on a gimmick of a PS3 farm... aka PS3/Sony publicity. Sony probably covered their research costs just so they could sit back and look like uber-specced smug cunts when the news article hits the headlines.

Zimmer wrote:

Aries_37 wrote:

Finray wrote:

But the PS2's processor was only 300Mhz...

And I don't get it. What did they do? In laymans terms?

Nothing. You're right the ps2 doesn't have processing power, Zimmer is wrong on this one. The reason emulators run like shit is because the emulators suck.

The ps3 on the other hand has a little beast inside of it ^^

Yeah, I guess. I dunno. I find it hard to think that nobody can actually create a proper representation of the PS2 on the PC.

It's an emulator, it took them a long time to figure out how to work out a PS1 emulator.

These guys are screwing around with code, trying to run things on a computer, that were meant not to be run on a computer.

Modern PCs are far more advanced than the PS2.

And it's not really a fair fight, 32 years for a common (not powerful) desktop, vs hundreds of PS3s doing it in 3 days. I'm sure 50 of my computer could do it in several hours.

Zimmer wrote:

Uzique wrote:

I'm still not buying the rabid console fanboyism here.

So you're telling me IBM and all the supercomputer researchers have been doing it wrong all along? We didn't need billion dollar number-crunchers, we needed a few PS2's hooked up together or a few N64's in a nice little rack-farm? Lolz. To me the main reason people care about this 'breakthrough' in MD5 security is because it has been performed on a gimmick of a PS3 farm... aka PS3/Sony publicity. Sony probably covered their research costs just so they could sit back and look like uber-specced smug cunts when the news article hits the headlines.

Where is the rabid console fanboyism? Can you stop shoving shit in your paragraphs which is irrelevant?

I don't own a PS3, nor do I need one one at the moment.

You really are ignorant at points. Where do you think the CELL came from? You idiot. IBM and Toshiba designed the Cell.... Get your facts straight before you come along with all this.

The Cell has 8 cores compared to the 4 of the most current CPU. Each of them acting independently as a 3.2GHz processor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Supercomputing

Aw, what was that? Yeah, you are wrong and you have no idea about what you are talking about. Kindly leave before you get owned more.

I don't have a ps3 either but as a geek I can really appreciate the beastliness of the cell.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/140064/h … words.html

Yup as I suspected: ''By implementing common ciphers and hash functions using vector computing, Breese has pushed the current upper limit of 10--15 million cycles per second -- in Intel-based architecture -- up to 1.4 billion cycles per second.''

''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."

''Within PS3, in Breese's case running Linux, there are six SPU (Synergistic Processing Unit) processor cores. Each core is able to do four calculations -- so across all of the cores it is possible to do 24 calculations at the same time, he says. The simplistic design of the processor architecture also helped increase the speed, he says.''

Edit: Reading the comments in that article it seems that the 1.4billion cycles is bullshit, but it's still more than 15 million...and the PS3 GPU needs to be factored in as well.

tldr: the ~£300 PS3 is good at this nerd shit.

Last edited by Aries_37 (2009-01-02 15:00:26)

Zimmer wrote:

MD5 isn't used as much, there are safer algorithms that are used out there with the internet ( SHA1, SHA256, AES ) so count yourselves lucky that MD5 isn't as popular as it used to be.

They're starting to get SHA1 collisions and rainbow tables too.

SHA1 + salts is the way to go atm, if SHA256 isn't available.

EDIT: By the way

Zimmer wrote:

No, Max couldn't. PS3s are incredibly powerful pieces of equipment. To give you a perfect example of how powerful consoles are, a proper PS2 emulator for a PC still hasn't been made. Why? Because the processing power is immense. Yes, there is an emulator out there, if you want to play your games at 10FPS. It's not the software.

The reason emulators suck is because the systems use propriety hardware with propriety drivers/software/OS. You have to emulate the hardware, which is incredibly difficult to do efficiently and requires a shit ton of resources. It has nothing to do with being powerful. Then there's the fact that you have to emulate the BIOS as well. You have to use your hardware to pretend to be other hardware. I hope you see the problem therein.

Current GPU's destroy the PS3 in processing power, and as for the Xbox 360, that is pretty far behind in terms of hardware spec.

Last edited by CrazeD (2009-01-02 16:06:47)

This is beyond me. I don't understand any of it.