> is cracking password hashes still hard, given modern GPU hardware techniques Yes, if the entropy is high enough. What else would be the point of salting and

> is cracking password hashes still hard, given modern GPU hardware techniques Yes, if the entropy is high enough. What else would be the point of salting and hashing passwords? There's no known way to reverse major hash algorithms like SHA-256 or bcrypt; you have to try all the combinations. So you have to do exponential work in the amount of entropy whereas GPUs only give a constant factor speedup over CPUs. If this ever changes (e.g., someone breaks SHA-256 or bcrypt) you will definitely see it as the #1 story on HN (and probably pretty prominently in mainstream media too).