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Password Cracking

Brute Force & Cracking cheatsheet — Login brute-force, password cracking, and hashcat/john usage.

Overview

Password Cracking involves recovering plaintext passwords from their hashed representations using tools like Hashcat and John the Ripper. Successful cracking depends on the quality of wordlists, rule-based mutation, and understanding of target password policies.

Password cracking is a critical post-exploitation technique for credential recovery and lateral movement.

Category: Brute Force & Cracking — Login brute-force, password cracking, and hashcat/john usage.

Key Commands & Payloads

The following commands and payloads are commonly used when testing for or exploiting Password Cracking:

hashcat -m 1000 -a 0 hashes.txt rockyou.txt
hashcat -m 1000 -a 0 hashes.txt rockyou.txt -r rules/best64.rule
hashcat -m 13100 -a 0 kerberoast.txt wordlist.txt
hashcat -m 18200 -a 0 asrep.txt wordlist.txt
hashcat -m 1000 -a 3 hashes.txt ?a?a?a?a?a?a?a?a (brute-force)
hashcat -m 1000 -a 6 hashes.txt wordlist.txt ?d?d?d (hybrid)
john --wordlist=rockyou.txt hashes.txt
john --wordlist=rockyou.txt --rules hashes.txt
john --show cracked.txt
john --incremental hashes.txt

Tools & Techniques

Recommended tools for Password Cracking:

  • Hashcat: GPU-accelerated password cracking
  • John the Ripper: CPU-based password cracking
  • Online databases: hashes.org, crackstation.net
  • Wordlists: rockyou.txt, SecLists, Have I Been Pwned
  • Rule-based attacks: best64.rule, OneRuleToRuleThemAll
  • Mask attacks: brute-force with known password patterns

Prevention & Mitigation

Security recommendations to prevent Password Cracking:

  • Enforce strong password policies (length > 12 chars, complexity)
  • Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) everywhere
  • Use modern hashing algorithms with salt (bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2)
  • Implement account lockout after failed attempts
  • Use password managers to generate random passwords
  • Regularly audit password strength with cracking tools
  • Implement passphrases instead of complex passwords

References

Additional resources: