The Nvidia RTX 4090 offers a truly generational leap in performance when it comes to running the best PC games, but it also greatly improves its ability to perform a much more sinister task. You may not realise it, but the top tier GeForce GPU is also scarily good at hacking passwords.
While you’ve nothing to fear from the Nvidia RTX 4090 inside your own gaming PC, hackers across the globe may soon covet the RTX 4000 flagship for their own nefarious purposes. According to security researcher Sam Croley (via Tom’s Hardware), the new GeForce card provides an “insane >2x uplift over the 3090”.
When asked how long it’d take the best graphics card on the market to crack an eight character password, Corley replied “368 minutes or 6.1 hours to complete the keyspace on 1x 4090 GPU”.
Rather than this news fill you with dread, take it as a prompt to update any passwords you’ve not changed for a while. Don’t forget to make them all unique too, as shared passwords can make you more vulnerable.