ASCI as Brute Force Cracker

[WarnikOdinson]

The title says it all. Could an ASCI developed for bitcoin also be useful for brute force cracking? Going along the lines of thought that bitcoin mining and cracking are basically the same thing they should work. I am however probably missing the subtle nuances that make this if not impossible unreasonable.

[1714895694]

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[1714895694]

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[waspoza]

You mean ASIC?

[Etlase2]

There are 3 main types of cryptography:

1) Symmetric cryptography - password based encryption that most everyone is familiar with. Not used at all in bitcoin.
2) Hashing algorithms - converting lots of data into irreversible gibberish. This is what bitcoin uses for mining and what ASICs are designed for.
3) Asymmetric cryptography/digital signatures - Totally different from symmetric or hashing and is what bitcoin uses for signing transactions and protecting coins and so on. An ASIC could be designed to brute force these, but the ones that are in development will not be capable of doing so.

[Capital One Corporation]

such ASIC could be developed. but the mining ASIC cannot do such job nicely.

[Gabi]

Could an ASCI developed for bitcoin also be useful for brute force cracking?

What is an "asci"? 

Anyway, NO.

[ro0tbit]

There are 3 main types of cryptography:

1) Symmetric cryptography - password based encryption that most everyone is familiar with. Not used at all in bitcoin.
2) Hashing algorithms - converting lots of data into irreversible gibberish. This is what bitcoin uses for mining and what ASICs are designed for.
3) Asymmetric cryptography/digital signatures - Totally different from symmetric or hashing and is what bitcoin uses for signing transactions and protecting coins and so on. An ASIC could be designed to brute force these, but the ones that are in development will not be capable of doing so.

It could be a stupid question, but would creating rainbow tables for MD5/LM/NTLM hashes be in the "Hashing algorithms" category?

Thx!

[Etlase2]

Hashing algorithms are commonly used to store sensitive password data, yes. Creating rainbow tables is just a non-brute force way to more quickly find a common password for a given hash. But bitcoin doesn't use hashing for storing passwords and the data that is hashed is public knowledge, so there is nothing to hide behind a hash. Mining attempts to find a very unlikely hash value (one that begins with lots of zeroes) by brute-forcing extra data (the nonce value) into the existing data to come up with an acceptable hash value to win a block.

[WarnikOdinson]

There are 3 main types of cryptography:

1) Symmetric cryptography - password based encryption that most everyone is familiar with. Not used at all in bitcoin.
2) Hashing algorithms - converting lots of data into irreversible gibberish. This is what bitcoin uses for mining and what ASICs are designed for.
3) Asymmetric cryptography/digital signatures - Totally different from symmetric or hashing and is what bitcoin uses for signing transactions and protecting coins and so on. An ASIC could be designed to brute force these, but the ones that are in development will not be capable of doing so.

Ah, thank you. I figured I would be wrong but at least I learned something.