RTX 3090 graphics card is so powerful it can crack a password. The primary purpose of graphics cards is, of course, to deliver high-quality video. But in recent years, these cards have become so powerful that some are using them to mine cryptocurrencies and even to brute-force passwords.
Cracking a password by brute force
A brute-force attack is a basic method used to crack a given password. It consists of trying all possible combinations one by one until the password in question is found.
A strong password is composed of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters. A strong password must be at least 8 characters long. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack. We can easily end up with billions of possible combinations, which would take years to test one by one. Consequently, brute-force attacks are rarely used by hackers. Nevertheless, with the phenomenal power of new graphics cards like the RTX 3090 combined with the processing power of CPUs, experts agree that it is possible to crack a password in a reasonable amount of time.
Passcovery to recover the password
Passcovery is one of the software programs used to recover passwords using brute force. It now supports recent graphics cards such as the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. If you know part of the forgotten password, it's easier to recover the entire password. To do this, Passcovery uses the combined processing power of the graphics card and the CPU. Thus, if the password isn't complex, the graphics card can find the password for an Office document or a ZIP file in a few hours or a few days at most. Indeed, the card can process up to 25 million combinations per second with its 24 GB of memory, 10,496 stream processors , and a boost clock speed of 1.7 GHz . However, if the password is complex, the card, in its current state, will only be able to find the password after ten to a hundred years.
Protecting yourself against hackers
It is therefore recommended to use a strong password : more than 10 characters, ideally 14, and composed of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. You can also use strong password generators and store these passwords in password managers such as KeePass, Dashlane, etc.
This way, you'll still be protected from brute-force attacks. But with the increasing computing power of PCs and graphics cards, it would be possible to crack a currently considered strong password in just a few hours.
