An Australian security consultant has apparently managed to turn the PS3 into the ultimate password cracking tool, through some miracle of wasted ti--...software engineering.

The project, dubbed Crackstation is not, as you might think, a way to use Sony's uber powerful home entertainment system to dispense drugs to the masses but is, infact, an experiment into utilising the power of the Cell processor to drastically speed up the time taken to crack complex passwords.

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The strength of cryptography implementations is usually based on its cracking time -- how long it would take for someone to sit down and crack it, says Breese. His discovery has demonstrated that the capability of cracking encryption algorithms has multiplied by 100.

Breese's discovery "will unfortunately make cryptography cracking faster", he says. However, he hopes that his research will help drive the need for stronger cryptography to be used, and push for better implementations of cryptography.
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There's all kinds of technical info at the souce, Australian site GamePro, that I don't understand but I'm sure is very interesting.

Of most interest to me is that the guy started this project as an excuse to get his company to buy him a PS3. Just exactly how much do they cost in Australia to make a man go to THIS much effort?