Among the oft-cited weaknesses in using passwords for authentication are that people choose bad, easily guessed passwords, such as “123456” or, even, “password.” But even carefully chosen passwords are not enough, at least if they are too short, according to researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The reason: graphics processing units (GPUs), which are powerful enough to conduct quick, effective brute-force attacks on password-protected systems, GCN reports. GPUs traditionally have been used in graphics cards to render screen displays on PCs. But they also can be used to accelerate some applications, especially those involving floating-point operations. Researchers have pointed out that GPUs have been amped-up over the years to handle increasingly sophisticated computer games, and in the process have achieved the power of a mini-supercomputer.

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