Say you’re a federal agent tracking a suspected child pornographer. Once you manage to seize the suspect’s encrypted hard drive you need a way to crack the password. Now you’ve got options: spend $1,100 on a server to run a password cracker, or buy a bunch of PS3s for less money to do the same job.
According to Claude E. Davenport, an agent at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.
“The Playstation 3 – its processing component – is perfect for large-scale library attacks,” says Davenport, and it comes at one quarter the cost of a regular server set-up. The processors are used to run millions of password combinations per second.
Now, just to be clear, the officers aren’t Sony fanboys. What’s crucial about the Sony platform is its ability to run Linux. So rest easy 360 owners, it’s nothing personal.
