Re: Wisecracker 1.0 - A high performance distributed cryptanalysis framework

[Jann Horn <jannhorn () googlemail com>]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 03:56:21PM -0500, Vikas N Kumar wrote:
> Wisecracker is an open source high performance distributed
> cryptanalysis framework that leverages GPUs and multiple CPUs. It
> allows security researchers to write their own cryptanalysis tools
> that can distribute brute-force cryptanalysis work across multiple
> systems with multiple multi-core processors and GPUs. Security
> researchers can also use the sample tools provided out-of-the-box. The
> differentiating aspect of Wisecracker is that it uses OpenCL and MPI
> together to distribute the work across multiple systems, each having
> multiple CPUs and/or GPUs.
>
> As an example an MD5 reversing for 6-8 character strings is provided.
>
> More information including source code, technical papers and API
> documentation can be found at
> http://selectiveintellect.com/wisecracker.html
>
> Thanks.
> Developers @ Selective Intellect LLC.
> http://selectiveintellect.com

I don't think this statement on your website makes much sense:

    A user can download Wisecracker™ on a GPU cluster virtual machine
    provided by Amazon EC2® and reverse an MD5 cryptographic hash for
    a 6 character password in about 20 minutes if using 1 virtual
    machine or in about 3 minutes if using 2 or more.

What does "2 or more" mean here? If I use two machines in parallel, that's
more than six times as fast as only using one machine? Seems weird to me.

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