Dictionary Attack on TrueCrypt with RIVYERA S3-5000

The popular free encryption software True Crypt uses whole device or partition encryption as well as encrypted container files to protect sensible data from unauthorized access. Several combinations of encryption algorithms and hash functions used for the key derivation can be chosen by the user. This paper regards the combination with SERPENT as encryption algorithm and WHIRLPOOL as hash function for the key derivation. A dictionary attack has been implemented for this combination using the FPGA-based high-performance computer RIVYERA S3-5000. The achieved performance reaches more than 200,000 passwords per second. Compared to 820 passwords per second, achieved by a fully threaded Intel Core i7-970 system at 3.2GHz using the Crypto++ library, this leads to a speedup of more than 247 with energy savings of about 99%.