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Think passwords, people. Think long, complex passwords. Not because a breach dump's landed, but because the security-probing-oriented Kali Linux just got better at cracking passwords.
Kali is a Debian-based Linux that packs in numerous hacking and forensics tools. It's well-regarded among white hat hackers and investigators, who appreciate its inclusion of the tools of their trades.
The developers behind the distro this week gave it a polish, adding new images optimised for GPU-using instances in Azure and Amazon Web Services. The extra grunt the GPUs afford, Kali's backers say, will enhance the distribution's password-probing powers. There's also better supoprt for GPU cracking, hence our warning at the top of this story: anyone can use Kali and there's no way to guarantee black hats won't press it into service. And they can now do so on as many GPU-boosted cloud instances as they fancy paying for.
Could some users of Kali Linux technically be called "thugs?"
(Score: 2, Informative) by davidjohnpaul on Monday May 01 2017, @01:11AM
There's an issue if the bank's password file/database is obtained by an attacker - they can then attempt to hack it while bypassing the "3 tries" rule, and dictionary words are much easier to try first. Hopefully the bank's just storing stretched, salted passwords, but that's impossible to know.
Of course, if somebody does get access to your bank's password file/database, there's likely to be bigger problems...