EncryptionElcomSoft, Pico Computing show world's fastest password-cracking solution

Published 18 July 2012

Pico Computing manufactures a range of high-end hardware acceleration platforms, offering a computational equivalent of more than 2,000 dual-core processors in a single 4U chassis; ElcomSoft updates its range of password recovery tools, employing Pico Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based hardware to accelerate the recovery of passwords

ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. says it has released the world’s fastest password cracking solutions by supporting Pico’s high-end hardware acceleration platforms. ElcomSoft updates its range of password recovery tools, employing Pico FPGA-based hardware to accelerate the recovery of passwords.

At this time, two products received the update: Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker and Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor. Users of these products can now recover Wi-Fi WPA/WPA2 passwords as well as passwords protecting Apple and Blackberry offline backups even faster than with the already supported clusters of high-end video accelerators produced by AMD and NVIDIA. Pico support is planned for Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery.

Pico Computing manufactures a range of high-end hardware acceleration platforms, offering a computational equivalent of more than 2,000 dual-core processors in a single 4U chassis. ElcomSoft says that by supporting Pico hardware in its password recovery tools, it — ElcomSoft — leaps forward in the performance race, delivering what the company describes as the market’s best speed of recovery for Apple and BlackBerry backups and WPA/WPA2 Wi-Fi passwords.

“Years ago, ElcomSoft pioneered hardware acceleration in password recovery”, says Andrey Belenko, ElcomSoft leading crypto analytic and the original inventor of the GPU acceleration of password recovery. “Today, together with Pico Computing we’re breaking a record in performance, offering faster recovery than anything else on the market.”

ElcomSoft also says that Pico’s FPGA boards set a new benchmark in forensic computational performance. Actual password recovery performance with Pico hardware exceeds that of every other acceleration solution supported by ElcomSoft. A Pico Computing M-501 equipped EX-500 PCI Backplane delivers 3 to 10 times the speed of a single top-of-the-line AMD or NVIDIA video card, or about 300 times the performance of a dual-core CPU.

Pico FPGA’s are the latest addition to the other hardware acceleration platforms supported by ElcomSoft.

“Pico FPGA-based hardware is used by many law enforcement and forensic organizations worldwide”, says Vladimir Katalov, ElcomSoft CEO. “By supporting this platform, we’re entering true supercomputer performance, delivering the world’s fastest password recovery solution to the most demanding customers.”

Today, ElcomSoft products support a range of hardware acceleration platforms including Pico FPGA’s, OpenCL compliant AMD video cards, Tableau TACC, and NVIDIA CUDA compatible hardware including conventional and enterprise-grade solutions such as Tesla and Fermi.

Based out of Seattle, Washington, Pico Computing specializes in highly integrated development and deployment platforms based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technologies. Applications for Pico Computing technologies include cryptography, networking, signal processing, bioinformatics, and scientific computing. Pico Computing products are used in embedded systems as well as in military, national security, and high performance computing applications.

Founded in 1990, ElcomSoft Co.Ltd. is an expert in computer and mobile forensics providing tools, training, and consulting services to law enforcement, forensics, financial, and intelligence agencies. ElcomSoft pioneered and patented numerous cryptography techniques.