A security engineer has ported the hashcat password cracking utility to the Gameboy Advance, achieving 727 hashes per second. This version, called gba-hashcat, utilizes the GBA's limited hardware resources, but significantly lags behind modern systems, performing 30 million times slower than today's powerful GPUs.
The gba-hashcat software was developed by security engineer solstICE, who aimed to showcase the capabilities of the Gameboy Advance (GBA) in a domain typically dominated by high-powered hardware. By running on an original GBA with a 16.8 MHz ARM7TDMI chip, gba-hashcat can process SHA256 hashes, albeit at a drastically slower speed compared to modern setups.
The performance of gba-hashcat is measured at 727 hashes per second. According to the developer, performing the same work on a modern GPU would take only one second for the time equivalent to one year on the GBA. The software is constrained by the GBA's maximum memory capacity, as standard cartridges allow for only 32 MB.
The Gameboy Advance has limited RAM and video RAM amounting to 288 KB and 98 KB respectively. This restriction leads to the inclusion of a smaller ignis-1M word list, limited to 8 MB, in the software. The GBA's processing and memory limitations significantly hamper the efficacy of brute-force password cracking.
X commenters on the original GitHub commit have expressed a desire for networking support to create clusters of GBA devices for more effective password cracking. Despite its limitations and being described as a 'dumb app,' this project demonstrates creativity in utilizing retro hardware for modern tasks.
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A security engineer has ported the hashcat password cracking utility to the Gameboy Advance, achieving 727 hashes per second. This version, called gba-hashcat, utilizes the GBA's limited hardware resources, but significantly lags behind modern systems, performing 30 million times slower than today's powerful GPUs.