[Cryptography] on brute forcing 3DES to attack SIMs

[ianG]

http://threatpost.com/majority-of-4g-usb-modems-sim-cards-exploitable/110139

“To brute-force DES keys, we use a set of field-programmable gate arrays 
(FPGA), which became trendy for Bitcoin mining a couple of years ago and 
got cheaper after the hype was over,” the researchers wrote. “The speed 
of our 8 modules *ZTEX 1.15y board with the price tag of 2,000 Euro is 
245.760 Mcrypt/sec. It is enough to obtain the key within 3 days.”

That was their fastest brute-force. If they had a partially known 3DES 
key, they could break it in 10 days.