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Linux Distribution Tames Chaos Chaos, a Linux distribution developed by Australian Ian Latter, harnesses the unused processing power of networked PCs, creating a distributed supercomputer that can crack passwords at lightning speed. The program remotely boots Linux on a PC without touching the hard drive, leaving the "slave" PC's operating system and data secure and untouched. Thirty PCs connected as a cluster create enough processing power to complete complex mathematical equations or high-level security tasks like password cracking that no individual PC could handle alone. Chaos has been a boon for internet security firm Pure Hacking, where Latter works as senior security consultant. Companies pay Pure Hacking to do controlled penetration tests of their network and try to break their access controls. "There's nothing that stands out more to a CEO than a page that contains his or her password," said Latter with a chuckle. However, Pure Hacking needs to be able to accomplish in a day what would take an accomplished cracker a month to complete. "The best way to do this is to apply a lot of computers to the task, and this is what Chaos was built for," added Latter. The idea for Chaos came when the self-taught geek moved from a successful career in the IT business world to a job working as a security officer at Macquarie University in Sydney. At the university, despite the large infrastructure and massive amounts of information being deployed, the administration was still fairly oblivious to the notion that it might be hacked. "Macquarie University taught me a lot about security, not just the technical issues, which I knew how to resolve, but the people issues and the cultural issues that make up the security problem," Latter said. While at the university, Latter, who had previously built a Linux-based firewall, began musing about another use for firewalls. Firewalls sit on the edge of many networks, and if they worked together and collated information on attacks as they happened, they could report that information centrally and possibly help mitigate a large-scale attack. The notion that computers could be linked together to provide end users with ever more power and functionality didn't leave Latter. He noted that empty Macquarie classrooms with 30 or more computers lay idle at night, and decided to try to capture this resource and redeploy it for something useful. With university students Ty Miller and Rob Dartnell, Latter began working on a distributed-computing system, which they named Chaos because it was a "groovy word that ended in OS," with the aim of harnessing the unused processing power of the university's networked PCs to test security and attempt to break encryption on some of the systems. In early 2004, Chaos emerged as a Linux distribution that could be booted from either a CD-ROM or a network. It turned an ordinary Pentium computer into a working openMosix node. OpenMosix is software that is added to the Linux kernel that allows computers running Linux to work together in a cluster. With a cluster of nodes (or PCs) linked together, the master node can serve processes to them, drastically reducing the time needed to complete a specific task -- and without touching the computer's hard drive.
http://www.wired.com
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