…and certainly not for installing custom firmware and breaching copyright laws, no, no, no. It’s actually for something far more devious. It turns out that ol’ Cell Processor is a powerful tool for brute force cracking security passwords, according to New Zealand-based security researcher, Nick Breese. Speaking at the Kiwicon hacker conference in Wellington, NZ, Breese claimed that “eight-character ‘strong’ passwords can be broken in a couple of days whereas before it would take weeks.” See – we always knew that cell processor would be good for something.

Fortunately, there’s not too many security systems that will be directly vulnerable to a hacker-rigged PS3 – most modern security tools, such as those used in online banking, worked out that sooner or later CPUs were going to improve to the point that older security technologies would child’s play to bypass and have upped their game significantly. Best make sure you remain suspicious of anyone on PSN who asks for your bank details though.

The most amusing irony in all this is that the real risk of hackers using this very trick is significantly increased because PS3s offer a pretty cheap way of hooking up your own brute force cracking super-computer, even using multiple systems linked together. To think we all laughed when Ken Kutaragi said the PS3 was probably too cheap.

Source
Next Generation

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