Password Cracking

Secure Shell is one of the most common network protocols, typically used to manage remote machines through an encrypted connection. However, SSH is prone to password brute-forcing. Key-based authentication is much more secure, and private keys can even be encrypted for additional security. But even that isn't bulletproof since SSH private key passwords can be cracked using John the Ripper.

The tactic of brute-forcing a login, i.e., trying many passwords very quickly until the correct one is discovered, can be easy for services like SSH or Telnet. For something like a website login page, we must identify different elements of the page first. Thanks to a Python tool for brute-forcing websites called Hatch, this process has been simplified to the point that even a beginner can try it.

Using Hydra, Ncrack, and other brute-forcing tools to crack passwords for the first time can be frustrating and confusing. To ease into the process, let's discuss automating and optimizing brute-force attacks for potentially vulnerable services such as SMTP, SSH, IMAP, and FTP discovered by Nmap, a popular network scanning utility.

Brute-forcing is an easy way of discovering weak login credentials and is often one of the first steps when a hacker finds network services running on a network they gain access to. For beginners and experienced hackers alike, it's useful to have access to the right tools to discover, classify, and then launch customized brute-force attacks against a target. BruteDum does it all from a single framework.

There are many password-cracking tools out there, but one of the mainstays has always been John the Ripper. It's a powerful piece of software that can be configured and used in many different ways. Metasploit actually contains a little-known module version of JTR that can be used to quickly crack weak passwords, so let's explore it in an attempt to save precious time and effort.

Hashes are commonly used to store sensitive information like credentials to avoid storing them in plaintext. With tools like Hashcat, it's possible to crack these hashes, but only if we know the algorithm used to generate the hash. Using a tool called hash-identifier, we can easily fingerprint any hashes to discover the right Hashcat mode to use to retrieve a password.

Microsoft Office files can be password-protected in order to prevent tampering and ensure data integrity. But password-protected documents from earlier versions of Office are susceptible to having their hashes extracted with a simple program called office2john. Those extracted hashes can then be cracked using John the Ripper and Hashcat.

A rainbow table can be thought of like a dictionary, except instead of words and their definitions, it holds combinations of characters on one side and their hashed form on the other. What is a hash and why would you want to know what random combinations of characters are hashed into?

Developers creating login systems know better than to store passwords in plain text, usually storing hashes of a password to prevent storing the credentials in a way a hacker could steal. Due to the way hashes work, not all are created equal. Some are more vulnerable than others, and a little Python could be used to brute-force any weak hashes to get the passwords they were created from.

Beginners learning brute-forcing attacks against WPA handshakes are often let down by the limitations of default wordlists like RockYou based on stolen passwords. The science of brute-forcing goes beyond using these default lists, allowing us to be more efficient by making customized wordlists. Using the Mentalist, we can generate millions of likely passwords based on details about the target.

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