I have never spent much time with large scale decryption. Indeed, I have always deferred general cryptographic work to my colleagues and they likewise forward me penetration, topography, and forensics work. Though I am well versed in concepts, I have very little hands on when it comes to cracking with GPU and coprocessors.
I am putting together a system to run various password recovery jobs and have a few questions that I could use some help with. I thank you in advance for your thoughts and suggestions.
My build will consist of a four socket, 4U server utilizing Magny-Cours (I dislike the Bulldozer architecture and I lose sleep over Intel's vPro being used as a backdoor. Anyone else share that paranoid delusion?) I am aware that x86-64 CPUs have little effect on hash speed but I will be using the system for more than password recovery. Anyway, the important point is the GPU. I know AMD has many advantages but are there certain encryption/algorithms that work only on Nvidia architecture (either from actual architecture or from certain software only being written to handle Nvidias architecture for whatever reason)? If there are rare cases in which an Nvidia platform would be advantageous I would be very pleased to know as I would like to develop a rig that can handle as many algorithms as possible. Is there a specific hash that fares better with something like a Tesla? (whether because of software support or architecture)
Regarding AMD, what is the absolute best card to use at present? Is there anything coming up within 3-6 months that might be worth waiting for? I know that a 7970 ranks highly but I remember reading something about an older card being better because it had more cores. Another question that I can't find any answer for is regarding FirePro cards. Would a card like the S9000 or S7000 be better than the 7970? I can't find a core count. I know that extra GPU memory is largely unneeded but do the FirePro cards also have superior processors or functions that benefit OpenCL? In short, is there a FirePro card that is better than the 7970 for our purposes?
I am a UNIX man. I am most at home with AIX (and other UNIX offerings from other vendors) and BSDs but Linux naturally plays a huge part. My question: is there a time that Windows (please say no) ever surpasses Linux in a specific hash type (be it from architecture or simply because developers focused on Windows when writing the decryption software)?
Something that I don't think has been mentioned in the forums is Tableau's TACC1441. I am guessing because there is no support under hashcat for the device but I am nevertheless interested in the option (be it using hashcat or other password recovery software). The graphs show that it can be up to 10-30 times faster than a quad core Intel processor but I am very interested in how the unit fares today (the system is over two years old and was compared against Core 2 architecture) against today's Xeons but more particularly against GPUs. You can see the results at the following: http://www.lostpassword.com/tacc-acceleration.htm and http://jchblue.blogspot.com/2009/09/tabl...rator.html . So, who fares better? The TACC1441 or something like the AMD 7970?
I realize that many of my questions are far reaching beyond being specific to hashcat but I have not been able to find the answers to the questions and there is no forum that I know of that would be better suited than this one. I thank you very much for your time.
-Host
I am putting together a system to run various password recovery jobs and have a few questions that I could use some help with. I thank you in advance for your thoughts and suggestions.
My build will consist of a four socket, 4U server utilizing Magny-Cours (I dislike the Bulldozer architecture and I lose sleep over Intel's vPro being used as a backdoor. Anyone else share that paranoid delusion?) I am aware that x86-64 CPUs have little effect on hash speed but I will be using the system for more than password recovery. Anyway, the important point is the GPU. I know AMD has many advantages but are there certain encryption/algorithms that work only on Nvidia architecture (either from actual architecture or from certain software only being written to handle Nvidias architecture for whatever reason)? If there are rare cases in which an Nvidia platform would be advantageous I would be very pleased to know as I would like to develop a rig that can handle as many algorithms as possible. Is there a specific hash that fares better with something like a Tesla? (whether because of software support or architecture)
Regarding AMD, what is the absolute best card to use at present? Is there anything coming up within 3-6 months that might be worth waiting for? I know that a 7970 ranks highly but I remember reading something about an older card being better because it had more cores. Another question that I can't find any answer for is regarding FirePro cards. Would a card like the S9000 or S7000 be better than the 7970? I can't find a core count. I know that extra GPU memory is largely unneeded but do the FirePro cards also have superior processors or functions that benefit OpenCL? In short, is there a FirePro card that is better than the 7970 for our purposes?
I am a UNIX man. I am most at home with AIX (and other UNIX offerings from other vendors) and BSDs but Linux naturally plays a huge part. My question: is there a time that Windows (please say no) ever surpasses Linux in a specific hash type (be it from architecture or simply because developers focused on Windows when writing the decryption software)?
Something that I don't think has been mentioned in the forums is Tableau's TACC1441. I am guessing because there is no support under hashcat for the device but I am nevertheless interested in the option (be it using hashcat or other password recovery software). The graphs show that it can be up to 10-30 times faster than a quad core Intel processor but I am very interested in how the unit fares today (the system is over two years old and was compared against Core 2 architecture) against today's Xeons but more particularly against GPUs. You can see the results at the following: http://www.lostpassword.com/tacc-acceleration.htm and http://jchblue.blogspot.com/2009/09/tabl...rator.html . So, who fares better? The TACC1441 or something like the AMD 7970?
I realize that many of my questions are far reaching beyond being specific to hashcat but I have not been able to find the answers to the questions and there is no forum that I know of that would be better suited than this one. I thank you very much for your time.
-Host