Cracking the Codes: A brand new Hive Programs Password Desk replace highlights a rising concern: fashionable GPUs can crack hashed passwords sooner than ever. As {hardware} improves, quick or easy credentials present little to no protection – making longer, extra complicated passphrases more and more important for safety.
Safety firm Hive Programs has been pushing the boundaries of password cracking utilizing the most recent GPU {hardware} since 2020. Its most up-to-date Hive Programs Password Desk replace employs the GeForce RTX 5090 to spice up cracking efficiency towards hashed passwords considerably. Ought to customers and firms be involved? The reply is not totally cut-and-dry.
Hash capabilities convert textual content of any size into fixed-size values, turning an inventory of plaintext passwords right into a cryptic hash desk. Even when attackers steal this desk from a server, there isn’t a strategy to reverse the hash to disclose the unique passwords.
Hackers can nonetheless attempt to crack hashed passwords by computing numerous character mixtures and evaluating the outcomes to identified breached knowledge – a technique Hive Programs simulates in its yearly Password Desk. For 2025, the analysts used twelve RTX 5090 GPUs to check their pace towards the bcrypt hashing perform.
Cracking an eight-digit password manufactured from solely numbers would take quarter-hour with the twelve GPU engine. Utilizing simply lowercase letters bumps the cracking time to 3 weeks. Strengthened credentials with numbers and letters, the timeline jumps to 62 years. Combine in symbols, and it balloons to 164 years of nonstop effort.
In comparison with the GeForce RTX 4090, which Hive Programs utilized in its 2024 Password Desk, Nvidia’s newest GPU technology would supply a 33 p.c efficiency enhance. Nonetheless, a single GeForce RTX 5090 would acquire a big edge with more and more complicated passwords, changing into twice as quick with passwords that includes numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols. You’ll simply want to attend 1,000 years to get the job carried out.
Whereas these theoretical occasions are more and more impractical, Hive’s comparability to the GeForce RTX 4090, from final yr’s desk, highlights how way more energy hackers can faucet into. Nvidia’s newest GPU technology supplies a 33-percent efficiency increase. Nonetheless, the GeForce RTX 5090 has double the acquire with more and more complicated passwords that includes numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols. Humorously, that’s the distinction between 2,000 and 1,000 years.
Hive notes that cracking passwords this manner nonetheless requires entry to a database of compromised password hashes. The 2025 Hive Programs Password Desk is an insightful reminder that complicated, longer passwords are at all times safer than the standard weak passwords we see yr after yr. Please replace your credentials, folks.
