Stuff A Lot Of Brute Power On Your FPGA To Crack A MD5 Password

In today´s article we present a project developed by students of the University of Illinois. This guy and his partner used the parallel power of the FPGA to create a hardware system which basically consisted of 16 MD5 cracking units-which were able to produce more than 700 million hashes per minute-, a keyboard control system to manage the user input and a VGA control system to handle the output through to the screen.

Unfortunately for those who like to get dirty with hand work, this project is too clean. They just needed a FPGA, a keyboard and a screen. No need to cut, wire, solder, plug, etc. Sorry.

Also, these guys did not publish any document, but they have a very useful video that explains everything. The truth is that this project is pretty much about the VHDL code they used and the construction of the digital circuit, which is very well explained in the video.

On the bright side, we have to be thankful because all the code and modules are available for downloading, so…easy.

As we always do, we do not recommend any illegitimate use of this article. Just try to replicate it and learn about FPGA´s and their power.

Have fun!

By Patchy