New Software Uses GPUs to Crack WPA Passwords

From DailyTech: GPU-powered general-purpose computing is causing all sorts of security nightmares these days, and wireless access points secured with WPA seem to be the latest victim. Elcomsoft, of “Advanced eBook Processor” fame, released a proprietary WPA/WPA2-PSK cracker that uses GPUs to brute force passwords in record time.

Elcomsoft claims its software can try almost 16,000 passwords per second (p/sec) with a single Radeon HD 4870, using an “advanced dictionary attack” that mutates entries from a master wordlist. Advanced hardware, such as the NVIDIA Tesla S1070 GP-GPU, raises the password rate to more than 52,000 p/sec – compared to an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU, which clocks at 1,100 p/sec.

The program, known as the “Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor”, claims it was designed for network administrators and IT personnel seeking to audit internal security, as well as external penetration testers and other “white hat” hackers.

While brute-force and dictionary attacks are nothing new, Wireless Security Auditor appears to be one of the most efficient solutions available. To work, it requires a tcpdump-formatted communications dump with at least one handshake packet. Elcomsoft says all processing is done off-line, and is completely transparent to the targeted network.

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