Cheap GPUs render strong passwords useless

[Jon Miller]

I think that security will just have to change how it works... or identity.

JM

[loinburger]

"computer processing speed grows exponentially; news at 11"

I figure the article is written more for those who should know better but don't - for example, my prior bank limited me to an 8-character alphanumeric password (no special characters allowed), which is inexcusable.

[Asher]

"computer processing speed grows exponentially; news at 11"

This is far more than exponentially.

[Kuciwalker]

That statement is logically incoherent.

[Kuciwalker]

Some things you might have meant:

"this particular increase increases computing power well past the previous exponential trend"
"this increase implies that the future trend will be super-exponential"

Former is true, but we're still only talking about <10 orders of magnitude = meh. Latter is, of course, absurd.

[Asher]

Some things you might have meant:

It was quite clear what I meant to anyone with social intelligence.

[Asher]

The concept is while CPU power grows exponentially, the massive increase GPUs provide isn't on the same baseline. It's a disruptive technology, not a result of traditional exponential CPU performance increases. This is what your post implied.

[Tupac Shakur]

People use passwords less than 24 characters?

I generally go 20, but maybe I'll increase that.

[Hauldren Collider]

Asher, Kuci wasn't lacking social intelligence, you were just wrong. There are plenty of times when he's needlessly pedantic, in this case you actually said something untrue.

[Asher]

Asher, Kuci wasn't lacking social intelligence, you were just wrong. There are plenty of times when he's needlessly pedantic, in this case you actually said something untrue.

No, you also lack the same social intelligence.

You both don't comprehend the importance of context. When people talk about computers increasing in speed exponentially, they're referring to a steady, systematic increase in computational speed roughly corresponding to Moore's Law. They are not referring to disruptive technologies like GPUs which are rather instantaneously many orders of magnitude faster than even the fastest CPUs at some tasks, which is the point of this article and of my comment.

My comment was about the GPUs being far faster than the "computational speed is growing exponential" assumption that is commonly associated with (1) CPU speed, (2) Moore's Law.

Go ahead and plot the performance in FLOPS of CPUs vs GPUs to understand my point if you still don't get it.

[Tupac Shakur]

Asher is exactly right, of course.

[Ben Kenobi]

This is far more than exponentially.

If you meant to say that the growth is discontinuous then you should have said this...

[Asher]

See? Ben proves I was right.

[Asher]

FWIW I don't see why the concept is so hard. "Exponentially" implies being part of a function and a rate of increase, it implies some sort of pattern. The GPU-powered increase is not part of that historical function.

The increase seen for these types of computations on the GPU is well in excess of what is normally considered part of the exponential growth of processing power, which is commonly associated with Moore's Law (doubling transistor density in 24 months --> doubling CPU power in 24 months).

[Ben Kenobi]

The increase seen for these types of computations on the GPU is well in excess of what is normally considered part of the exponential growth of processing power, which is commonly associated with Moore's Law (doubling transistor density in 24 months --> doubling CPU power in 24 months).

That's one type of exponential function. What you meant to say is that the growth wasn't exponential at all, it was discontinuous. Exponential functions can have any value you desire depending on the parameters. It's impossible for a discontinuous function to be greater then all values of exponential functions.

Saying that the pattern doesn't follow Moore's law = correct. Saying that the pattern is discontinuous is correct. Saying that it is more than exponential is just wrong. Completely wrong.

All that we know is that the limits approach infinity and 0, but never reach either of them.

Look, you just got PWNed by Kuci of all people. Admit it, move on.