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116 Comments
- coheedcollapse, on 11/29/2007, -1/+126It'll be funny if someone uses the PS3 to crack the blu-ray protection.
- GrassrootsNinja, on 11/29/2007, -3/+82"Breese says the initial reason for embarking on the research project was to get the company to buy him a PS3."
- LimeParrot, on 11/29/2007, -8/+51"Crackstation". ROFL. I don't think Sony will approve..
- LimeParrot, on 11/29/2007, -8/+42Dude, you realise how stupid that sounds? You're a PS3 fanboy just as much as there are 360 fanboys. Both consoles are great. And the PS3 will probably have greater hardware capabilities in the years to come, as developers learn to take advantage of its more advanced hardware. And this is coming from someone who owns only a 360. Fanboyism is so stupid... you take a side and blind yourself to all facts. Geez.
- coheedcollapse, on 11/29/2007, -6/+37Unneeded. If someone's going to be an idiot, they'll do it. Calling them out on it will just incite them to do it more.
- IllBeBack, on 11/29/2007, -3/+28Blu-ray has already been cracked, as well as HD-DVD. Too late.
- TheUngod, on 11/29/2007, -4/+25Or crack bangbus.com and play WITH your Ratchet and Clank?
- lostdiggacct, on 11/29/2007, -5/+25*Feels the PS3/360 fanboys*
They really keep telling themselves if they argue on the internet about their console, the whole world will shift their opinion. - inactive, on 11/29/2007, -5/+21Wow, yet another use for the PS3 besides playing games. I gotta get one now.
- chewbacca77, on 11/29/2007, -5/+20And nuclear fusion has more power than coal, but that doesn't mean we can harness it.
- bigsteve, on 11/29/2007, -1/+13Wouldn't be surprised. The PS3 lends itself well to parallel operations like brute-forcing.
- Amazetbm, on 11/29/2007, -2/+13Interesting. Back in the day, didn't Saddam order a couple of hundred PS2's and cluster them together to get around supercomputer export restrictions?
- blizzok, on 11/29/2007, -1/+11It's actually not that hard at all, once you've got linux on the thing.
- Rassa, on 11/29/2007, -3/+13"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."
Now that is impressive! Kinda scary too. Wonder if the NSA has a farm of cell processors? Heck they might have something even better. Ah doesn't matter, dont' really trust cryptography and feel it's a false sense of security.
Now before the fanboys take over don't forget this part of the article. Your PS3 is not some supercomputer that is going to take over the world.
"Intel processors are designed to do all kinds of complex calculations, whereas the PS3 is good at doing simple things very quickly." - bigsteve, on 11/29/2007, -2/+11Don't bother Googling. The console's price of 400-500 USD should be enough to let you know that you're not going to find a custom Cell workstation at the price point, especially when you're a consultant with a limited experiment budget.
- bigsteve, on 11/29/2007, -2/+11The article is a little short on the really gritty facts. Security-assessment.com, the site that Nick Breese works out of, also isn't clear on exactly what the PS3 is capable of in this situation. He references what "Intel hardware" is capable of (93-100x faster,) but is that matching core-to-core? The Cell processor wiki page says that the PS3 contains a 7-core Cell array, with one being reserved by the OS leaving 6 for developers.
The next question is, is he using Linux loaded on the PS3 (most likely) or is he actually taking advantage of a Sony dev-kit (probably not, cost prohibitive)? The PS3's hardware hypervisor only reveals 2 cores to guest OSes like Linux loaded on the PS3 (via the Sony-sanctioned way, if there's another way that gets more to the core of the hardware, I don't know about it and it didn't turn up in 5 minutes of Google searching.)
Very interesting though, considering CPU cycles per dollar, PS3 packs some real bang for the buck. And you can play Guitar Hero or something on your lunch break. - krische, on 11/29/2007, -1/+10I still can't believe you are posting that ridiculous "no games" comment. Try reading digg for a change.
- coheedcollapse, on 11/29/2007, -8/+17Don't be an idiot.
- Rassa, on 11/29/2007, -2/+11What is the cost difference between a cell-based workstation/server and a PS3? I'm too lazy to google right now but wouldn't be surprised if the PS3 is cheaper. I mean they are selling them for a lose. Maybe now they have these results with the PS3 they will move onto bigger and better cell-based systems to increase performance even more.
- RockinRoel, on 11/29/2007, -1/+9Of course hackers could crack, it all depends on the purpose. This guy has no bad intention, and is therefore not really a cracker. He is pushing the boundaries of cracking, that's hacking.
I know what a hacker is, I read 'How to become a hacker', and I've got stickies with the definition of it on my Dashboard. - jstone, on 11/29/2007, -2/+10He said Fusion, not Fission. Fusion reactors currently require nearly as much energy input as they produce, just to keep the reaction going.
- emorphien, on 11/29/2007, -4/+11not really more raw power for gaming, it's a different processor architecture that lends itself well for certain tasks if utilized correctly
- slaystench, on 11/29/2007, -1/+8... That was cracked a LONG time ago.
- HolemCross, on 11/29/2007, -1/+8This makes me think that Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" illustration of the NSA's super computer is nothing more than a giant PS3.
- tmasky, on 11/29/2007, -1/+6Nick Breese here =)
Very sorry about that dude, I know exactly how you feel. I was also working on GPU accelerated crypto when Elcommsoft popped up with their stuff (and slapped a nasty software patent on it).
Just a bit of background that's missing:
First, I apologise profusely for the lack of technical information. I presented this as a pre-release talk at New Zealand's first (real) security conference, Kiwicon. I went forward with talking to the media because:
1) This was covered initially by Patrick Gray. A very talented journalist who actually understood what I was doing.
2) I wanted at least some information in the public domain so that other companies are unable to patent this technique. I heavily believe crypto (amongst other things) should be free. This is the most effective method to ensure this occurs.
I'm still working on practical attacks with the technology and will be submitting it to international security conferences. At that stage, I will be releasing full information, source code, etc. publicly.
Additionally, I really don't believe your work is in vain. There's lots of interesting applications of this tech, even within crypto alone =) - Maciula, on 11/29/2007, -1/+6I think he did. He used them as a guidance system for invisible WM-D's that our government is still looking for.
- coheedcollapse, on 11/29/2007, -3/+8Yeah. Fanboys are bad on either side of the argument, really. You can't accuse one side of being fanboys and then completely bash the hell out of a pretty good console.
- zaffir, on 11/29/2007, -2/+7Sony's Hypervisor allows all OtherOS installations - which is what Linux is - full access to the Cell PPE (its most-traditional PowerPC-based processor, meant to be used for managing the SPEs) and 6 of the 8 SPEs. One of the SPEs is disabled to improve production yields, and the other is reserved for "system use." Both the PPE and SPEs can be considered as having a core each, so in all you get access to 7 cores (though the term core isn't 100% accurate) under Linux.
I'm surprised googling for 5 minutes didn't turn this up. - Nossie, on 11/29/2007, -2/+7was that real or just political FUD? I do vaguely remember the story.
- SteveMax, on 11/29/2007, -1/+6Damn, I really need to learn to parallelize my code. My Athlon 64-based machine is getting too slow for most of my software, and a PS3 system could be a cheap option.
- quadracr28629, on 11/29/2007, -2/+6He was too busy playing the decent games that are on the 360.
- krische, on 11/29/2007, -2/+6Well, I've been playing Warhawk about 75 hours it says. My math is a little rusty, but is that over 6?
- coheedcollapse, on 11/29/2007, -2/+6I wonder if they're already using this type of architecture to crack encrypted data streams. I really wouldn't doubt it, from what I've read, the NSA is usually pretty ahead of the rest of the government agencies when it comes to technology.
- nahteecirp, on 11/29/2007, -3/+7The thing to realize is that these other 6 cores (SPE's in Sony speak) are not anything like a regular processor. They are much more like what you find in graphics cards, and so are significantly faster for some types of operations. For this problem, the Cell processor is effectively 100 times faster. But because it is a different type of processor, any comparisons by things like clockspeed are worthless (which incidentally is why most 360 vs. PS3 hardware holy wars are a crock of crap anyway).
- Shaflugi, on 11/29/2007, -2/+5GTA3 looking better than what was out at the time? *****, the games on the Dreamcast looked better than GTA3.
- bigbadgoat, on 11/29/2007, -2/+5depends on the developer. Some say its a breeze, and fun to code for.
- need4speed, on 11/29/2007, -3/+6excellent. ps3 isn't just an @home machine but also a crackstation!
- Nossie, on 11/29/2007, -1/+4and in the uk they'e marketed it as the cheapest blu-ray player, that plays games!
- JayD16, on 11/29/2007, -1/+4Can't it be both?
- m3t00, on 11/29/2007, -1/+4cryptoanalyst might be best in this case
- RevEng, on 11/29/2007, -2/+42^256 cycles is a bloody large number. Considering anything above 2^128 cycles (1 cycle = whatever it takes to try one password -- a factor of even 1000 is irrelevant at this scale) is nearly impossible to brute-force (it would take too long to be useful for almost any purpose), how many processors would you need to make cracking a 256-bit key effective? At least 2^128. That's a lot of processors. Sony only wishes they could sell that many units. Between increases in clock speeds and parallel processing, you won't see a speedup that large in the next 30 years, that's for sure.
While the original commenter was wrong (hundreds of units would not take a few hundred years off of a hundred trillion), reducing it to a billion years is still pointless. Until you can reduce it to even a couple of years, it's effectively useless. - RevEng, on 11/29/2007, -1/+3Good thing this reporter looked into similar systems, such as the multiple FPGA system that a group made for brute-forcing RFIDs. Using the x86 as a baseline for cracking speed is ridiculous -- it's designed for general purpose, not cracking. RISC chips and FPGAs have been able to out-pace x86 for a long time. The only "amazing" thing here is that it's easier to get access to a PS3 than a dedicated FPGA array.
- Veni_Vidi_Vici, on 11/29/2007, -2/+4"Breese says the initial reason for embarking on the research project was to get the company to buy him a PS3."
It's nice to see Social Engineering at work. - KrustyTClown, on 11/29/2007, -45/+47360 Fanboy can't wait to post the tired comment ''but when will it get any games''
- JayD16, on 11/29/2007, -2/+4Well that depends what you're doing. You can't make the claim it can't use that 'power' for 'gaming' unless you define certain tasks and useless to gaming. Because it has a long pipeline, branching is very costly. Its not that you have to work hard, you just have to write your code differently. And all the raw power lends to making very populated worlds. Look at R&C...there can be thousands of bolts in the air and scores of guys on screen and it looks amazing and no slowdown.
- NeonFire, on 12/05/2007, -0/+2but when will it get any games?
Haha, it was tempting. ^ I am a PS3 fan but I just couldn't resist. - catalysis, on 11/29/2007, -5/+7I don't understand why he doesn't just buy a cell-based workstation or server. It's not like the PS3 is the only way to use a cell-BE system.
- counterplex, on 11/29/2007, -2/+4Keep in mind that Sony ships an authorized Linux distro for the PS3.
- Dracusis, on 11/30/2007, -0/+2GTA 3 was released over a year after the PS3, it was not a launch title.
- zaffir, on 11/29/2007, -3/+4This is depressing - i've been working on a similar project in my free time. Any info on whether he'll open source it?
In other interesting news, the dude has the same last name as me O.o. -
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