I'm sure you could build an asic for assistance, but I tend to see more FPGA style tools for these kinds of things given changes / variables that you wouldn't w

I'm sure you could build an asic for assistance, but I tend to see more FPGA style tools for these kinds of things given changes / variables that you wouldn't want hardcoded. There have definitely been a few tools built, the article I linked had reference to DES hardware crackers. Anyone that comes up with a way to repurpose all those bitcoin miners into something productive will be pretty cool in my book.