The latest video card generation that is manufactured by ATI and Nvidia can be used to speed up password recovery attempts tremendously. Toolkits like Nvidia’s CUDA offer drivers and development examples to aid developer’s in the integration of gpu accelerated password recovery programs. One of the programs that is making use of the gpu to recover passwords is Rar GPU Password Recovery. The supported video cards at this point in time are ATI HD RV7×0s cards that include ATI Radeon 4870, 4890 and 4770 or Nvidia cards supported CUDA including GTX 260, 8600 GTS or 8600 GT. It is also recommended to have the latest Catalyst or Geforce drivers installed.

The developer provides some plain numbers to show the effectiveness of using the GPU to recover a rar password with four characters:

~168 passwords per second on single core of Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz (crark’s result)
~325 passwords per second on 8600 GT
~3120 passwords per second on ATI HD4850
~2075 passwords per second on GTX260/192SP
The performance of the listed ATI card is almost 20 times that of a password recovery where only the cpu is used. The password recovery software is a command line utility and the developer is offering extensive information on the possible parameters that can be used to recover the password. The suggested length of the password should not exceed six characters although it is theoretically possible to start a password recovery for a password with up to 17 chars.

The basic command for the password recovery is:

igrargpu.exe [switch:param] filename.rar

The command

igrargpu.exe /a:b /c:s /min:1 /max:4 archive.rar

will for example check all four letter combinations of lower case Latin characters. Known characters of the password can be added to the command to speed up the recovery attempt.It is advised to check the readme for a detailed overview of all possible parameters. The password recovery program can also use a dictionary based attack with rules. RAR GPU Password recovery should work on most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The portable software is available for download at the developer’s website.

Here’s an interesting time killer. Got 3 minutes? Try and guess the most popular passwords people tend to use.

Play the game here but if you’re really short on time or just can’t be bother, you can find the list here, but where’s the fun in that? (below is just a screenshot and a couple of passwords to get you started).

A secure, memorable password is easy for you to remember, and hard for others to guess.

Everywhere you turn you’ve got to come up with a password to register for something or another. Whether it’s the dozens of web sites that require you log in to use them, or your ATM card PIN, or your wireless network login, how do you decide on a new password? More importantly, how do you remember it?

Remember 100 different passwords with 1 rule set.

You don’t need to remember 100 passwords if you have 1 rule set for generating them. One way to generate unique passwords is to choose a base password and then apply a rule that mashes in some form of the service name with it. For example, you may use your base password with the first two consonants and the first two vowels of the service name. Say your base password is “asdf.” (See how easy those keys are to type?). Then your password for Yahoo would be ASDFYHAO, and your password for eBay would be ASDFBYEA.

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