Nvidia graphics card can crack common passwords within milliseconds, experts warn

Cybercriminals will be rejoicing in the latest gaming gadget from Nvidia – the RTX4090 a graphics processing card that also allows you to guess an eight-digit sequence in less than an hour.

To make matters worse for the cybersecurity-conscious, one password-cracking enthusiast took to social media to proclaim the new gizmo’s dubious virtues – presumably not originally intended by the manufacturer.

“First HashCat benchmarks on the Nvidia RTX4090!” proclaimed Sam Croley, who goes under the Twitter alias of Chick3nman. “Coming in at an insane >2x uplift over the 3090 for nearly every algorithm. Easily capable of setting records: 300GH/s NTLM and 200kh/s bcrypt w/ OC!”

What this means in layperson’s terms is that when judged according to criteria set by the popular password-assessing tool HashCat, Nvidia’s latest offering is more than twice as effective at busting through passwords than its predecessor, the RTX3090.

Apparently, Croley has also concluded that not even password-protecting staples – such as the hashing function Bcrypt – can stand up to it for very long. Usually Bcrypt and its other high-profile rivals such as Microsoft’s New Technology LAN Manager can make passwords unreadable when accessed by anybody but the legitimate account holder.

But a rack of eight RTX4090 cards took just 48 minutes to crack an eight-character sequence, roughly two-and-a-half times more quickly than its predecessor. Those who insist on sticking to absurdly simplistic passwords such as “123456” can expect to see that turnaround time drop to mere milliseconds.