How are the RTX 4090s being used to crack passwords?

It would appear that Nvidia's RTX 4090 graphics card is a bit of a whiz when it comes to the strength and brute force required to hack passwords. Sam Croley, a security researcher, tweeted about the card's power for this task, as measured by benchmarks done using HashCat, a password-cracking tool.

This implies that any affluent gamer with an RTX 4090 can break an average password in a couple of days — and that's assuming you adhere to decent password-setting standards, which most of us most certainly don't.

HashCat V.6.2.6, the benchmark, is a well-known password-cracking tool that is best used by system administrators and cybersecurity experts to verify or speculate about user passwords in very limited cases of extreme need.

Just 8 RTX 4090s will be able to crack a password in a matter of hours

This development means that an eight-character password could be cracked in 48 minutes using a password hashing setup with eight RTX 4090 graphics cards. Although it is a specialized use case, it provides context for the GPU's capabilities.

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Although the flagship has the ability to crack passwords, it is more likely to be utilized to play top PC games. Nevertheless, it's always advisable to adhere to secure password recommendations, such as not using the same password for many accounts. Utilizing one of the top password managers is another smart move.

The Hashcat application provides a range of attack techniques that, depending on the user, may aid in password recovery or grant unauthorized access to other people's accounts. Examples of these attack types include dictionary attacks, combinator attacks, mask attacks, rule-based assaults, and brute force assaults.

While benchmark results can appear concerning, it's important to keep in mind that the approach might only have a limited number of real-world applications. Hashcat and other password-cracking methods may be used in a variety of attacks that profit from predictable human behavior that often results in lax security measures.

How does the RTX 4090 stack up against the RTX 3090 in this use case?

Although it still represents a bigger performance boost than we observed in the RTX 3090's graphics performance, testing shows that the RTX 4090 outperforms the RTX 3090 in practically every algorithm with almost doubled performance. This is probably because Nvidia continues to spend a lot of time and money on the design of its graphics chips in order to boost its performance in data centers.

Cost of operation

The cost of password cracking is another intriguing point to consider; purchasing a $1,600 GPU is expensive, and electricity expenses are also incurred with each password cracking attempt. So it's not merely a question of will. RTX 4090 lowers the cost of cracking passwords, which will continue to happen as long as more potent GPUs are released and security methods are mostly unchanged.

Final thoughts

In terms of both competitive gaming and synthetic performance, Nvidia's release of the RTX 4090 graphics card is a significant one. It has the ideal version required to play any game in its maximum settings while enjoying a seamless overall experience. Nevertheless, a lot of clients are turned off by the product's high price.

Don't worry, not every owner of an RTX 4090 will use it for password-cracking purposes. Additionally, offline assets rather than online ones typically benefit from the simplicity of password cracking offered by programs like HashCat. The likelihood of an unstable rich guy using your PC to break passwords at will is very remote—so remote, in fact, that it's almost non-existent.

However, in light of this, it could still be a good idea to review the best practices for online security, starting with using longer passwords