Playstation 3 Used by Feds to Bust Pedophiles

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
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Federal officials have been buying up the old-style PS3 (the fat ones) and loading up Linux on them because they’re highly effective at cracking passwords on confiscated computer equipment from alleged pedophiles. They say there’s no after-hours Street Fighter 4 going on though because there are no controllers attached. Riiiight.

"Bad guys are encrypting their stuff now, so we need a methodology of hacking on that to try to break passwords," Claude E. Davenport, an agent in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, told the Scripps reporter. "The Playstation 3 -- its processing component -- is perfect for large-scale library attacks."
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I'm gonna let you finish, but Chrome OS is the best linux distro, THE BEST LINUX DISTRO!

I mean, this is just silly, don't these people have racks and racks and floors upon floors of computer servers built to crack codes; isn't the NSA supposed to be handling this? I would think the immigration & customs would call NSA and ask them "we got a code to crack", "ok send it over"... 10 seconds later "ok it's cracked."

I thought the patriot act was supposed to get these government agencies to work together, not come up with MacGyveresq ideas to fend for themselves.
 
This idea gets the..........

pedobear-disapproval.jpg
 
If someone uses a massive (at least 26 characters) alpha-numeric pass phrase, all of the PS3s on earth together wouldn't be able to crack it (well, at least before our sun expands into a red giant). The NSA itself can't defeat True Crypt, as long as it is protected by a strong pass phrase. It is nice to see PS3s being used for something useful though. This will only catch the asshole pedos who are smart enough to use encryption but too stupid to use a strong password.
 
Out of the billions of tax dollars that make up the budgets of these agency's and they buy used ps3's to crack encryption? Words can't express my amazement at the stupidity of all this.
 
bacon said:
Out of the billions of tax dollars that make up the budgets of these agency's and they buy used ps3's to crack encryption? Words can't express my amazement at the stupidity of all this.
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It's stupid to use the most cost-effective method or buy the cheapest FLOPS/$ machine? :rolleyes:
 
It's our Government working at it most efficient best. Make a huge bureaucracy so they can communicate better. When they don't just spend more money.
 
quixotic said:
It's stupid to use the most cost-effective method or buy the cheapest FLOPS/$ machine? :rolleyes:
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It is when there are rooms upon rooms of processing power available but under another agency's control.
 
Really PS3s? I mean used ones on top of that? Sounds fishy to me... they're not spending millions on a dedicated custom computer cluster jobby or anything? Please tell me they're at least paying 10x the price of a new one for each old one or I'll lose faith in the government!
 
bacon said:
It is when there are rooms upon rooms of processing power available but under another agency's control.
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There are rooms of processing power in many research institutions too... however just like the NSA most likely it's got a pretty large workload all the time. Cracking passwords on potential pedophiles computers probably is a bit low on the usage scale.
 
bacon said:
Out of the billions of tax dollars that make up the budgets of these agency's and they buy used ps3's to crack encryption? Words can't express my amazement at the stupidity of all this.
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Why not? It's small, fairly cheap and they say its architecture is suited for these types of operations...
While general purpose x86 processors are great for some things, other architectures have their own strengths and weaknesses. Look at Fermi for another example of gaming technology that is being adapted for other purposes...
 
Heck, for all we know we may be cracking passwords via the DC projects we're so fond off... I mean really, how do you KNOW you're doing protein folding simulations?
 
RamonGTP said:
Heck, for all we know we may be cracking passwords via the DC projects we're so fond off... I mean really, how do you KNOW you're doing protein folding simulations?
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:eek: Great point. I am glad that I am not the only person thinking the same thing... :cool:
 
Everybody knows if they don't buy games they're actually costing Sony money. :D
 
If they were smart enough to encrypt it they should have used an encryption that once cracked leaves them access to garbage files or something that looks innocent.

To the guy who asked about the NSA; They have better things to do.
 
Before passing knee-jerk judgement, try searching on optimizing password cracking, or using GPUs for password cracking, or PS3s directly. They're remarkably powerful at such narrow tasks. And a fraction of the cost you'd have to lay out for similar power on traditional systems.
 
bacon said:
Out of the billions of tax dollars that make up the budgets of these agency's and they buy used ps3's to crack encryption? Words can't express my amazement at the stupidity of all this.
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"Though they aren't using the new PS3 Slim (since you can't install Linux on the new models) purchasing 20 old PS3 units is still about $8,000 cheaper than the Dell servers C3 had used previously."
 
Why not use the GPU's on modern graphics cards? Seems like you would get a better price/performance ratio.
 
provoko said:
I'm gonna let you finish, but Chrome OS is the best linux distro, THE BEST LINUX DISTRO!

I mean, this is just silly, don't these people have racks and racks and floors upon floors of computer servers built to crack codes; isn't the NSA supposed to be handling this? I would think the immigration & customs would call NSA and ask them "we got a code to crack", "ok send it over"... 10 seconds later "ok it's cracked."

I thought the patriot act was supposed to get these government agencies to work together, not come up with MacGyveresq ideas to fend for themselves.
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Seriously? I think the NSA has bigger concerns than whether Al Knockerup has kiddie porn on his PC. I'm not saying it's not important, but the NSA has much other things to worry about.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Supercomputing

IBM's latest supercomputer, IBM Roadrunner, is a hybrid of General Purpose CISC Opteron as well as Cell processors. This system assumed the #1 spot on the June 2008 Top 500 list as the first supercomputer to run at petaFLOPS speeds, having gained a sustained 1.026 petaFLOPS speed using the standard Linpack benchmark. IBM Roadrunner uses the PowerXCell 8i version of the Cell processor, manufactured using 65 nm technology and enhanced SPUs that can handle double precision calculations in the 128-bit registers, reaching double precision 102 GFLOPs per chip.[44][45]
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sfsuphysics said:
Really PS3s? I mean used ones on top of that? Sounds fishy to me... they're not spending millions on a dedicated custom computer cluster jobby or anything? Please tell me they're at least paying 10x the price of a new one for each old one or I'll lose faith in the government!
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:D +1
 
Surely they have better technology out there for them to use instead of a bunch of PS3 stuff???:confused:

Maybe the budget cuts forced them to really scale things back......
 
MaddogJew said:
If someone uses a massive (at least 26 characters) alpha-numeric pass phrase, all of the PS3s on earth together wouldn't be able to crack it (well, at least before our sun expands into a red giant). The NSA itself can't defeat True Crypt, as long as it is protected by a strong pass phrase. It is nice to see PS3s being used for something useful though. This will only catch the asshole pedos who are smart enough to use encryption but too stupid to use a strong password.
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Not to mention using such a password isn't hard at all. Just take the MD5 hash of your normal password.
 
how do they crack 256 bit AES encryption even with a million ps3 consoles!? or are they just happy they cracked the password of a windows 98 installation...
 
I thought that running linux on the PS3 only gave you access to one of the cores? Anyone else remember hearing this?...
 
Multithread > single thread. I'd be willing to bet they are going to spring for some femri's when they launch.
 
multithread > single thread FOR this application, not allways. Better post this before the nazis get here.
 
vsboxerboy said:
I thought that running linux on the PS3 only gave you access to one of the cores? Anyone else remember hearing this?...
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"Other" OSes on the PS3 have access to 6 of the 7 SPEs. The other big thing is that Sony restricts access to the RSX GPU, meaning that there is no access to it.
 
Keiichi said:
"Other" OSes on the PS3 have access to 6 of the 7 SPEs. The other big thing is that Sony restricts access to the RSX GPU, meaning that there is no access to it.
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There's no access at all to the RSX? How does linux get basic video accelerations? There must be an exposed API.

And, how do people build game engines for it? Is that what's included in the developer kit (for thousands of dollars).
 
venm11 said:
And, how do people build game engines for it? Is that what's included in the developer kit (for thousands of dollars).
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Yes that's the point. Sony doesn't want people to make games for the PS3 using the Linux option for free. There were some hacks to bypass the restriction, but firmware updates "fixed" that.
 
venm11 said:
There's no access at all to the RSX? How does linux get basic video accelerations? There must be an exposed API.

And, how do people build game engines for it? Is that what's included in the developer kit (for thousands of dollars).
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From Wikipedia:
Linux on the PlayStation 3 allows for a huge range of homebrew programs to be developed and is entirely and completely sanctioned by Sony. Although the Cell's performance is more than enough to handle most media requirements or render complex 3D graphics, it does lack the teraflops performance of a contemporary GPU's texture fetching hardware. For this reason many complex games aren't possible on the PlayStation 3 through Linux, as access to hardware acceleration in the RSX is restricted by a hypervisor.

There have been developments in enabling access to the RSX through the Linux kernel and the X Window System[18]. It's possible to use the RSX memory as swap space. A trick to access some 3D functions was blocked with firmware 2.10.
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That's too bad.

I'm very interested in PS3 development.... is there ANY way to develop for PS3 that doesn't require an expenditure or developing via Linux?

For example, I'd love to be able to add selections to the menu to run homebrew apps/scripts. Developing small games would be very cool too. I just know so little about this, it seems like you have to work for a company that has a relationship with Sony.
 
The current PS3 devkits go for about $2000. The only thing is you have to be an actual developer (there's an application process.) Then if they let you in then you can buy it. They sometimes pop up on ebay. A friend of mine sold his devkit for a tad over $1k.
 
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