> According to our friend Chick3nman, the same RTX 5090 can crack 4.18 billion (with a “b”) of these hashes every second.
It may just be imprecise writing, but this is very misleading. The stat is that 4.18 B hashes can be computed per second, not cracked. Computing a hash means converting a given input into its hash. Cracking a hash means starting from the given hash and determining what the input must have been. To crack a given hash you have to iterate over the input space and compute all their hashes (barring other exploitable weaknesses).
So, sure you can "crack" 4.18 B hashes per second, as long as you don't care that the hashes you are "cracking" are not the one you're interested in.
It may just be imprecise writing, but this is very misleading. The stat is that 4.18 B hashes can be computed per second, not cracked. Computing a hash means converting a given input into its hash. Cracking a hash means starting from the given hash and determining what the input must have been. To crack a given hash you have to iterate over the input space and compute all their hashes (barring other exploitable weaknesses).
So, sure you can "crack" 4.18 B hashes per second, as long as you don't care that the hashes you are "cracking" are not the one you're interested in.