Hashcat: GPU-Accelerated Password Cracking Mastery

Introduction

Hashcat is the world's fastest password recovery utility. It supports GPU acceleration and over 300 hash types.

Hash Modes

• MD5: -m 0
• NTLM: -m 1000
• SHA-256: -m 1400
• sha512crypt: -m 1800
• bcrypt: -m 3200

Attack Modes

Dictionary Attack

• Basic: hashcat -m 0 -a 0 hashes.txt wordlist.txt
• With rules: hashcat -m 0 -a 0 hashes.txt wordlist.txt -r rules/best64.rule

Mask Attack

• Unknown chars: hashcat -m 0 -a 3 hashes.txt ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l
- ?l = lowercase, ?u = uppercase, ?d = digit, ?s = special

Hybrid Attack

• Word + mask: hashcat -m 0 -a 6 hashes.txt wordlist.txt ?d?d?d?d
• Mask + word: hashcat -m 0 -a 7 hashes.txt ?d?d?d?d wordlist.txt

Optimization

• GPU selection: -d 1
• Speed optimization: -O
• Session management: --session=mysession
• Restore session: --session=mysession --restore

Conclusion

Hashcat is essential for password security auditing. Use it to verify password policies.