As we reported earlier today, Amazon is now offering a Cluster GPU Instance. Security blogger Thomas Roth decided to find out how quickly the system could be used to crack SHA1 hashes. He was able to crack 14 hashes with passwords ranging in length from one to six characters in 49 minutes. "This just shows one more time that SHA1 is deprecated," he writes.
"You really don't want to use it anymore!" Roth shares his process in this post. In the comments he notes the cost of cracking the passwords was only between four and five dollars.

Last summer, mainstream media outlets like the BBC began reporting what security company Elcomsoft had known for years: GPUs are highly efficient password cracking machines.

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