To Catch a Predator: PS3 style!

[Deftones]

Saw this today. Thought it was a pretty fascinating article.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ps3-linu...news-5119.html

Over the past week, most PlayStation 3 consoles have been chugging along playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. But all the while, some other PS3 consoles have been helping to stop child predators.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, also known as C3, is now using the computational power of the PlayStation 3 to crack the computer passwords of suspected child pornographers.

"Bad guys are encrypting their stuff now, so we need a methodology of hacking on that to try to break passwords," said Claude E. Davenport, a senior special agent at C3. "The Playstation 3 - its processing component - is perfect for large-scale library attacks."

Prior to the PS3, the team was using a Tableau/Dell server combination that cost more than $8000. Clearly a group of networked PS3s is far more cost effective.

Naturally, cracking a child predator's password requires software that's more specialized than what's found on the PlayStation Store. C3 uses Linux on the PlayStation 3 to run its cracking software. Sadly, the newer PS3 Slims do not support the installation of Linux, so the enforcement body is now looking to buy 40 more original PS3s to add to the 20 it already has.

Might these agents be playing a skirmish round on their breaks, or perhaps pull a Wii Bowling drug bust event? Not likely.

"There's no controllers hooked up," Davenport said.

[pinata242]

I wonder how much they'd buy my OG 60gb model for?

[kgrogers1979]

So some networked PS3s are more powerful than computers that cost thousands and thousands of dollars? This sounds as bogus as all those old articles about how the PS2 was so powerful that Saddam Hussein was going to use them to launch missiles at us.

[PopcornTreeCt]

Originally Posted by kgrogers1979

So some networked PS3s are more powerful than computers that cost thousands and thousands of dollars? This sounds as bogus as all those old articles about how the PS2 was so powerful that Saddam Hussein was going to use them to launch missiles at us.

This is exactly what popped into my mind.

[jonw9]

Its the graphical processors. They are great a performing certain mathematical computations much faster than a standard CPU. I am guessing trying to crack passwords is a good application. Now l33t haxors will be trying it too.

Our high computing computing network is getting one soon. A GPU based server (gfx-000 (Nvidia Cuda Node) - A specialized testing node designed to take advantage of the Nvidia Graphic Processors for stream computing. The system is composed of a Quad core 2.4 Ghz Intel Processor, 8GB of Ram,three Nvidia GTX 280 Video cards with 1GB of ram available on each card.), not a PS3.

Here is some info on the Nvidia card: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tesla

[Michael Corvin]

I'm still waiting on my Cell based toaster.

[fujishig]

Great, cheap password hackers. I'm sure only good can come of this.

[mhg83]

WOW it really can do everything

Spoiler:

(Except for Backwards Compatibility )