"a number of Android applications are offering practical solutions that unlock the power of a phone that's really a Unix machine you can slip into your pocket,' Wayner writes".
Except that the iPhone is also "really a UNIX machine you can slip into your pocket.
It sounds like they are guessing passwords rather than cracking keys. But is there any advantage in using a CELL processor for this?
AES, for example, is the encryption standard used by PGP's whole disk encryption. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_force_attack:
"AES permits the use of 256-bit keys. Breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires 2128 times more computational power than a 128-bit key. A device that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second would require about 3×1051 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space."
Hence my thought that they are not cracking keys.
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.