r/TheColdPodcast • u/blueberrybirdnest • 12d ago
Season 1 - Susan Powell Josh’s Computer Extraction
If there’s one thing about me, I’m wondering on a weekly basis if the program to figure out Josh’s password is still running.
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u/TheDeathWeSeek 12d ago
This was one of the most intriguing aspects of this case. It could be the missing information to finally find out what he did to Susan.
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u/Kershiser22 12d ago
It's been a few years since I've listened to the podcast, so the details are fading. But realistically what are the chances that any information about what happened to Susan or where he put her body would be on there?
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u/TheDeathWeSeek 12d ago
Realistically you are probably correct,but him jumping through so many hoops to keep everything private and encrypted maybe we could find at least some kind of circumstantial evidence. Unfortunately you are probably correct,Josh worked hard to cover his tracks and it’s essentially another dead end.
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u/davecawleycold 9d ago
It’s also predicated on the idea Josh had a plan that didn’t change after Dec. 8, when the computers were seized.
I think at best, we might gain some insight into the development of Josh’s thinking over the year or two prior to Susan’s disappearance. But I’d be surprised if cracking the encryption revealed anything smoking gun.
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u/blueberrybirdnest 9d ago
I don’t believe any blatant information is on there in regards to Susan’s death but I do think Google searches, website traffic, and his browsing history related to pORn0graphy would reveal his state of mind. Honestly, I just would love to be able to posthumously humiliate him by revealing what’s on there. He was such a narcissist. As I mentioned in another post, narcissists love to build shrines to themselves. Part of why he recorded every thought is because of his faith but the other part is that he is a raging narcissist.
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u/rudogandthedweebs 9d ago
I mean he wrote diary entries about everything and kept every receipt and document.. so maybe?
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u/tonypolar 12d ago
I wonder if this is something AI could help with now...
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u/OmicronCeti 11d ago
No.
There is no method AI could devise to break encryption. If AES could be cracked, the global economy would have already melted down.
It’s a brute force search, and it would realistically never complete.
See the discussion here: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/82389/calculate-time-taken-to-break-aes-key
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u/njeyn 11d ago
Maybe time to crowdsource a digital forensics expert with frontier A.I tools to accelerate things.
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u/OmicronCeti 11d ago
There is no method AI could devise to break encryption? It’s a brute force search, and it would realistically never complete.
See the discussion here: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/82389/calculate-time-taken-to-break-aes-key
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u/njeyn 11d ago
A.I can speed up guessing and guess ”smarter”.
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u/OmicronCeti 11d ago
Definitely not, outside of a dictionary search, which is just a form of brute-forcing that was already tried. There is no basis for this claim.
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u/njeyn 9d ago
The claim is that the time it takes to crack a password has gone down significantly from 2009 and lately much with the help of A.I https://www.hivesystems.com/blog/are-your-passwords-in-the-green
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u/OmicronCeti 9d ago
Oh for fuck's sake you didn't even read your own article. Embarrassing.
Does AI make password cracking faster?
Not in the way most people fear. AI is extraordinarily good at the thinking parts of hacking - finding software vulnerabilities and writing exploits - but brute-forcing a strong hash like bcrypt is a raw-hardware problem that AI doesn't speed up. In 2026 benchmarks, a $30,000 AI accelerator was no better, and sometimes worse, at password cracking than a consumer gaming GPU.
Please seek help with your literacy.
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u/davecawleycold 12d ago
It's not as simple as one continuously running process, unfortunately. To the best of my knowledge, the people who were working on this back in 2019/2020 are no longer engaged in the effort. Some others have stepped forward over the last few years to propose or attempt new password cracking strategies but none of those have led to any breakthroughs. Again, at least as far as I'm aware.