Distributed Password Cracking API

Presented at The Fifth HOPE (2004), July 11, 2004, 9 a.m. (60 minutes).

The low-cost of the modern PC, the proliferation of the Internet, and the speed of its underlying networks make parallel task-based computing very possible. We've seen massive networks like SETI demonstrate this. SETI is programmed for a simple task: Get a piece of data, process it at leisure, spit out results if any, get a new piece of data. This has been used already to do some brute-forcing of security tasks with systems like distributed.net. But that system is sophisticated and large and you can't make it do tasks like cracking crypt() passwords or websites or any variety of brute-forcing tasks. This talk is about an extensible framework and API for creating distributed password crackers. The framework is easy to use, easy to distribute, and easy to add different kinds of cracking to. The software will be released open-source during the conference.


Presenters:

  • David Bernick / Bernz as David "Bernz" Bernick
    David "bernz" Bernick has been active in Boston's 2600 scene for many years. Currently Bernz is the Senior Engineer at Legal Computer Solutions, a company that provides a secure document repository center for large (1,000,000 pieces of evidence) legal cases (criminal and civil). Part of the work also includes sometimes cracking documents, passwords, and zip files for which there are no keys or decrypted copies, hence the software you'll see presented at the conference. Long ago in his youth, bernz wrote an article for 2600 Magazine on the topic of social engineering. Bernz grew up near the sea and currently lives beneath it.

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