rwilson

[Rwilson]

Hi all,

I am new to the site but have been a hobby hacker for a little over 2 years. Unfortunately the laptops I was using for my Kali Linux needs has died and I am in the market for a new one. However, I am curious if it would be more efficient both in cost and speed, to actually build my own computer designated only for Kali and some of my heavier hash and password cracks. I have built/refurbished computers in the past, but never something designed specifically for this purpose. Ideally this computer would have full functionality, but really it would be a cracking wizard. I read the Kali docs and while it gave me the minimum specs required, I haven't really found anything that says what the best is nor any guidance on how to expand on a basic build.

Here are some of the questions I have or topics I would like more experienced people have:

1) In order to increase my cracking speed I will be increasing my GPU's. Would it be possible to use a bitcoin/litecoin/whatever-coin mining rig set up to increase my speeds? Has any one ever attempted converting a rig to run Linux and hashes?

2) What kind of CPU would anyone recommend?

3) I know my power supply will be dictated based on the above 2, but any suggestions?

4) Any other suggestions or parts I am not thinking of?

Thanks in advance!

[cooper]

If you're going to use the device to crack hashes, the CPU matters very little. You need a big, fat bastard of a GPU, and preferably several of them. The reason you don't get a recommendation is because it's all relative - you could pay twice the amount of money for a device that delivers 50% more performance which might be a bad idea if you're going to end up using 1 card (you should've just bought 2 for a 100% performance improvement) but a good idea when your planned setup already populates all the PCIe slots available. If you're going with multiple graphics cards you're probably going to need a more expensive mobo.

1) The only mining rigs that make money are ASICs which you can't repurpose to do password cracking. There are mining rigs based on a regular PC with a stack of GPUs in them which would work fine with hashcat and friends. Note that they are rather expensive (6 GPUs is a lot of money no matter the card)

2) Doesn't matter since a GPU does 10x what a CPU does.

3) If you have a stack of GPUs you might need 2 PSUs, and big ones at that. Do the math before you get one, and once you've added the numbers add 20% for the actual size of the PSU.

4) Study this article and its follow-ups in excruciating detail. You'll thank yourself later.