As child pornographers become more sophisticated computer users, C3 is noticing that many of these criminals turn to complex encryption schemes in order to prevent federal agents from accessing their data. Although federal agents may secure a warrant to seize and search the computers of suspected child pornographers, the Fourth Amendment prevents authorities from forcing suspects to surrender their passwords. So, in order to access the data stored on these hard drives, C3 is often forced to turn to brute force–an elegant way of saying “trial and error”–password cracking.

The amount of computing power needed to crack a password by brute force is significant. Even a basic six-digit password has 281,474,976,710,656 possible combinations and would require a prohibitive amount of time to crack with an average desktop computer. As a result, C3 has been using expensive computer clusters in order to crack passwords. However, AccessData Corp., a company specializing in digital investigations, recently discovered that Sony’s PLAYSTATION 3 could run custom installations of Linux and be networked together in order to process as many as 4 million passwords per second–a significant speed improvement at a cost $8000 lower than the previously employed Tableau/Dell server combination.

Unfortunately, the latest PS3 ‘Slim’ console eliminates the ability to run Linux, so C3 has turned to eBay in order to purchase many of its consoles. The organization currently has 20 of the original PS3s and is in the market for another 40.

Despite having a sizable collection of gaming consoles, C3 assures that its agents are not slacking off. In fact, they claim you won’t find a single PS3 controller being used in their entire building. At $55 a piece, I wish they would send some of those unloved controllers my way.

Hat tip to GamePolitics.

Parallel Processing, a Newport Beach, Calif. branch of New Bedford, Mass.’s International Parallel Machines, has flipped Sony over and attacked its weak point for massive damage. According to a complaint filed by Parallel Processing in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sony’s Cell Processor, which is the main processor in its PLAYSTATION 3 video game console, infringes upon US Patent no. 5,056,000, a 1991 patent for “synchronized parallel processing with shared memory.”

Parallel Processing’s patent in question has never before been fully utilized in a consumer application because it was deemed too difficult to write applications that take full advantage of the processor, a complaint commonly heard around the PS3′s launch.¹ Instead, parallel processing technology prior to the introduction of the PS3 was generally only utilized in supercomputers.

Parallel Processing alleges that Sony’s introduction of the Cell Processor into the PLAYSTATION 3 has caused “irreparable harm” and, as a result, the company seeks damages, reimbursement of legal fees, interest, and “the impounding and destruction of all [Sony's] products that infringe the [patent].” (hyperlink added)

For more info, see: Destructoid
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1. Other developers, however, have also alleged that the PS3 is far easier to work with than originally thought.