Looks like a very good system for password cracking (using GPU-accelerated Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery), isn’t it? Especially assuming that even single GeForce GTX 295 is faster than Intel Octa-Core CPU (to be released later this year).

Welcome to the newly opened, all-new ElcomSoft Blog! In this blog, we shall be covering various issues in the area of computer security. Windows hacks, weak passwords, security weaknesses of well-known products, electronic identity theft, new attacks and algorithms that help or prevent us from cracking certain passwords, and similar issues will be covered.

Fresh life experience…A very good friend of mine told me a story I would like to share with you with her kind permission. Recently she has found a new job in a medium size company. She was perfectly satisfied with her new position and new tasks. She also got a well equipped working place including her principal tool for work – computer, which actually she inherited from an ex-employee who lately moved to another company. The company could have bought her a new computer, but what for, if there was working one absolutely ownerless. Windows XP already installed along with numerous useful applications, even her favorite Safari was there.

Today morning ElcomSoft announced a new tool for password recovery. This one is a hardware, a supernatural amulet of Siberian shamans. Password Recovery Tambourine appears in 4 editions: Pentagon, Glamourous, Russian and Open Source. This hardware requires a special 15-month training with authentic Yakutsk shaman guild. However, if you are patient enough to spend a year and a half in Siberia and not afraid of permanent frost there, then after the training no password would be strong enough for you. You’ll crack it in seconds with your preferable edition of Password Recovery Tambourine. Cultural note The idea of creating Password Recovery Tambourine grew out of the popular belief between Russian system administrators that when nothing else helps you have to rest your hopes on dancing with a ‘BU-BEN (Russian for ‘tambourine’). They say, dancing with a tambourine helps to reanimate one’s server, find bugs, set up operational system and what not. Implementation of this belief to password recovery was not easy, at least 200 ritual dances have been performed during the development stage. Finally,

The Encrypting File System (EFS) was first introduced in Windows 2000 and, as Microsoft claims, is an excellent encryption system with no back door.

lifehacker has started a series of posts on choosing and using secure passwords. Few days ago they published a list of handy tips from their readers on how to create passwords you can rely on. One of the readers admitted that in a company he works for IT administrators require password change every 30 days and

Have you ever had to say sorry because you’ve sent an e-mail to a wrong person? Isn’t it an embarrassing situation? Hopefully it wasn’t a confidential e-mail otherwise you may get into trouble. After all it’s typical of all of us. You’ve simply made a stupid blunder to enter a wrong address…or to use AutoComplete. Such things may trigger some unpleasant consequences which is actually a minimal harm AutoComplete can incur.

The German c’t magazine (issue 06/09) has published an article about cracking of NTLM-hashes with graphic cards. In this article pen test experts from SySS GmbH bring up a touchy question of how fast an intruder can break into your system. How long should your Windows logon password be, so that you could keep having your beauty sleep?