A simple detail about password cracking tools from the wiki. In cryptanalysis and computer security, password cracking is the process of recovering passwords from data that have been stored in or transmitted by a computer system. A standard approach (brute-force attack) is to try guesses repeatedly for the password and check them against an available cryptographic hash of the password. Password cracker is not hacking a password; this software only recovers your password. Got it? So don’t use against someone’s system or illegally.

The other purposes of password cracking tools might be to help a user recover a forgotten password of a system or any software. But in the world of hacking, hackers are using such a tools to break or crack the stolen password hashes of a database. Or using them to hack the wireless network and crack the passwords. So hope you completely understand the primary purpose of password cracking tools.

List of Top 10 Password Cracking Tools:

1. OphCrack
2. RainbowCrack
3. HashCat
4. Cain & Abel
5. Wfuzz Password Cracking Tools
6. Brutus Password Cracking Tools
7. John the Ripper
8. THC Hydra
9. L0phtCrack
10. Aircrack-NG

#1. OphCrack

It is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and runs on multiple platforms. See some features of Ophcrack password cracking tools. The uploaded version of Ophcrack compiled for Windows 64-bit platforms. This version can preload tables using the whole RAM available instead of the only 2GB on 32-bit platforms.

Features:

• Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, …
• Cracks LM and NTLM hashes.
• Free tables available for Windows XP and Vista/7/8.1.
• Brute-force module for simple passwords.
• Audit mode and CSV export.
• Real-time graphs to analyse the passwords.
• Live CD available to simplify the cracking.
• Dumps and loads hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition.
• Free and open source software (GPL).

Download the latest Ophcrack version from Sourceforge, the open source software storage.

2. RainbowCrack

The RainbowCrack password cracking tools is a general propose implementation of Philippe Oechslin’s faster time-memory trade-off technique. It cracks hashes with rainbow tables. RainbowCrack uses time-memory tradeoff algorithm to crack hashes. It differs from brute force hash crackers.

A brute force hash cracker generates all possible plaintexts and compute the corresponding hashes on the fly, then compare the hashes with the hash to be cracked. Once a match is found, the plaintext is found. If all possible plaintexts are tested, and no match is found, the plaintext is not found. With this type of hash cracking, all intermediate computation results are discarded.

Features:

• Full time-memory tradeoff tool suites, including rainbow table generation, sort, conversion and lookup
• Support rainbow table of any hash algorithm
• Support rainbow table of any charset
• Support rainbow table in raw file format (.rt) and compact file format (.rtc)
• Computation on multi-core processor support
• GPU acceleration with NVIDIA GPUs (CUDA technology)
• GPU acceleration with AMD GPUs (OpenCL technology)
• GPU acceleration with multiple GPUs
• Runs on Windows operating systems
• Windows XP 32-bit / 64-bit
• Windows Vista 32-bit / 64-bit
• Windows 7 32-bit / 64-bit
• Windows 8 32-bit / 64-bit
• Runs on Linux operating systems (x86 and x86_64)
• Unified rainbow table file format on all supported operating systems
• Command line user interface
• Graphics user interface

Download the latest version of RainbowCrack password cracking tools from project-rainbowcrack website.

3. HashCat

Hashcat is the world’s fastest CPU-based password recovery tool. While it’s not as fast as its GPU counterpart oclHashcat, extensive lists can be easily split in half with a good dictionary and a bit of knowledge of the command switches.

Hashcat was written somewhere in the middle of 2009. Yes, there were already close-to-perfect working tools supporting rule-based attacks like “PasswordsPro”, “John The Ripper”. However, for some unknown reason, both of them did not support multi-threading. That was the only reason to write Hashcat: To make use of the multiple cores of modern CPUs.

Features: 

• Worlds fastest password cracker
• Worlds first and only GPGPU based rule engine
• Free
• Multi-GPU (up to 128 GPUs)
• Multi-Hash (up to 100 million hashes)
• Multi-OS (Linux & Windows native binaries)
• Multi-Platform (OpenCL & CUDA support)
• Multi-Algo (see below)
• Low resource utilisation, you can still watch movies or play games while cracking
• Focuses highly iterated modern hashes
• Focuses dictionary based attacks
• Supports distributed cracking
• Supports pause/resume while cracking
• Supports sessions
• Supports restore
• Supports reading words from file
• Supports reading words from stdin
• Supports hex-salt
• Supports hex-charset
• Built-in benchmarking system
• Integrated thermal watchdog
• 150+ Algorithms implemented with performance in mind
• and much more

Download the latest version HashCat from the oclhashcat website.

4. Cain & Abel

It is a password recovery tool for Microsoft Operating Systems. It allows easy recovery of various kind of passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords using Dictionary, Brute-Force and Cryptanalysis attacks, recording VoIP conversations, decoding scrambled passwords.

It also helps you for recovering wireless network keys, revealing password boxes, uncovering cached passwords and analysing routing protocols. The program does not exploit any software vulnerabilities or bugs that could not be fixed with little effort. It covers some security aspects/weakness present in protocol’s standards, authentication methods and caching mechanisms; its main purpose is the simplified recovery of passwords and credentials from various sources. However, it also ships some “non-standard” utilities for Microsoft Windows users.

Download the latest version of Cain and Abel from the oxit website which creates and support this software.

 5. Wfuzz Password Cracking Tools 

Time for special password cracking tools for web applications. The Wfuzz password cracking tools is a software designed for brute forcing Web Applications. It can be used for finding resources not linked (directories, servlets, scripts, etc.). Brute force GET and POST parameters for checking a different kind of injections (SQL, XSS, LDAP, etc.), brute-force Forms parameters (User/Password), Fuzzing, etc. See some features below and read full details at the edge-security website.

Some Features:

• Multiple Injection points capability with multiple dictionaries
• Recursion (When doing directory brute force)
• Post, headers and authentication data brute forcing
• Output to HTML
• Colored output
• Hide results by return code, word numbers, line numbers, regex.
• Cookies fuzzing
• Multithreading
• Proxy support
• SOCK support
• Time delays between requests
• Authentication support (NTLM, Basic)
• All parameters brute-forcing (POST and GET)
• Multiple encoders per payload
• Payload combinations with iterators
• Baseline request (to filter results against)
• Brute force HTTP methods
• Multiple proxy support (each request through a different proxy)
• HEAD scan (faster for resource discovery)
• Dictionaries tailored for known applications (Weblogic, Iplanet, Tomcat, Domino, Oracle 9i,
  Vignette, Coldfusion and much more.i
  (Many dictionaries are from Darkraver’s Dirb, www.open-labs.org)s

Download the latest version from the edge-security website.

6. Brutus Password Cracking Tools

The Brutus is also a good password cracking tools for the web application, but it is not updated for many years. You might still need a web application password cracker. Brutus was one of the most popular remote online password cracking tools. It claims to be the fastest and most flexible password cracking tool. This tool is free and is only available for Windows systems. It was released back in October 2000.

Features:

Brutus version AET2 is the current release and includes the following authentication types :

• HTTP (Basic Authentication)
• HTTP (HTML Form/CGI)
• POP3
• FTP
• SMB
• Telnet
• Other types such as IMAP, NNTP, NetBus etc. are freely downloadable from this site and directly imported into your copy of Brutus. You can create your forms or use other peoples.

The current release includes the following functionality :

• Multi-stage authentication engine
• 60 simultaneous target connections
• No username, single username and multiple username modes
• Password list, combo (user/password) list and configurable brute force modes
• Highly customisable authentication sequences
• Load and resume position
• Import and Export custom authentication types as BAD files seamlessly
• SOCKS proxy support for all authentication types
• User and password list generation and manipulation functionality
• HTML Form interpretation for HTML Form/CGI authentication types
• Error handling and recovery capability in resume after crash/failure.

If you would like to use this old and out of date tools, download from the hoobie website.

7. John the Ripper

The John the Ripper is a fast opensource password cracking tools, currently available for many flavours of Unix, Windows, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. Besides several crypts (3) password hash types most commonly found on various Unix systems supported out of the box are Windows LM hashes, plus lots of other hashes and cyphers in the community-enhanced version.

Download John the Ripper from the openwall website, the place to bringing security into the open environment.

 8. THC Hydra

The THC-Hydra is a fast network logon cracker which supports many different services. When you need to brute force crack a remote authentication service, Hydra is often the tool of choice. It can perform fast dictionary attacks against more than 30 protocols, including telnet, FTP, HTTP, https, SMB, several databases, and much more.

Download the THC Hydra from THC website and see feature sets and services coverage also.

9. L0phtCrack

The L0phtCrack Password Cracking Tools is an alternative to OphCrack. It attempts to crack Windows passwords from hashes. For cracking passwords, it uses Windows workstations, network servers, primary domain controllers, and Active Directory. It also uses a dictionary and brute force attacking for generating and guessing passwords.

Features: 

• L0phtCrack 6 is packed with powerful features such as scheduling, hash extraction from 64 bit Windows versions, multiprocessor algorithms, and networks monitoring and decoding. It is still the easiest to use password auditing and recovery software available.
• The range of Target Systems Software runs On Windows XP and higher. It operates on networks with Windows NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003 R1/R2, Server 2008 R1/R2, on 32- and 64-bit environments, as well as most BSD and Linux variants with an SSH daemon.
• Password Scoring
• Pre-computed Dictionary Support
• Windows & Unix Password Support
• Remote password retrieval
• Scheduled Scans
• Remediation
• Updated Vista/Windows 7 Style UI
• Executive Level Reporting
• Password Risk Status
• Password Audit Method
• Password Character Sets
• Password Length Distribution
• Summary Report

Download the latest version from l0phtcrack website.

10. Aircrack-NG

The Aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys cracking program that can recover keys once enough data packets have been captured. It implements the standard FMS attack along with some optimisations like KoreK attacks, as well as the PTW attack, thus making the attack much faster compared to other WEP cracking tools.

In fact, Aircrack-ng is a set of tools for auditing wireless networks. To secure a Wireless network against Wireless hacking read the article “5 Steps to Secure your home Wireless Network“.

Download the Aircrack-ng from the Aircrack-ng website, where you can find more information about this Wireless Password Cracking Tools. You might need to read “5 ways to Hack Wireless Network” article that is a good way to secure your Wireless Network.

11. Medusa

The Medusa password Cracking tool is intended to be a speedy, massively parallel, modular, login brute-forcer. The goal is to support as many services which allow remote authentication as possible. The author considers following items as some of the key features of this application:

Features:

• Thread-based parallel testing. Brute-force testing can be performed against multiple hosts, users or passwords concurrently.
• Flexible user input. Target information (host/user/password) can be specified in a variety of ways. For example, each item can be either a single entry or a file containing multiple entries. Additionally, a combination file format allows the user to refine their target listing.
• Modular design. Each service module exists as an independent .mod file. It means that no modifications are necessary to the core application to extend the supported list of services for brute-forcing.
• Multiple protocols supported. Many services are currently supported (e.g. SMB, HTTP, POP3, MS-SQL, SSHv2, among others).

Download the latest Medusa tools from the foofus website which support the fgdump tool for mass password Auditing of Windows Systems. It is also a best cracking tool.

Conclusion For Cracking Tools

These are the most popular tools that hackers are using for cracking password hashes and codes of web applications and operating systems. I’m sure that there are many important passwords cracking tools that I miss to bring the list, so tell us the name please to complete this list.

If you need more information about such a tools, read the password is cracking section of Certified Ethical Hacking (CEH) from the EC-council academy. And the post “Certification Road-map for Information Security” for security lovers.

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Keeping Secure Home Wireless Network is a responsibility of each person at home. Your smart devices like mobile, laptop, tablet etc. may make you ease communication with friends, family and work staffs. But using them without keeping safe and secure is a big risk for your personal data and files.

Most users don’t know how to secure their smart devices. They think it’s quite enough if the devices will not be lost or steal. It’s just physical security of a device, what about installing apps from non-trusted resource, update the apps, installing any antivirus and anti spyware apps will make your device riskier then stolen or losing.

The below categories are about securing your smart devices at home and work or at public places.

1. How do I Secure Home Wireless Network?

Previously we had explained completely in detail about how to secure a home wireless network? From buying a modern Wireless access point or Wireless router that support security protocols and features for home to setup Wireless network security. I recommend you to read this article which explain the below steps to secure your home wireless network.

• Change the Wireless Router SSID
• Choose a strong password to Secure Home Wireless Network
• Enable encryption
• Hide your Wireless SSID name
• Change the default user name and password of Wireless management interface
• Disable remote access for management to secure home wireless network

2. Update Operating System and Apps

Updating operating system will install the latest critical and security update to patch the OS bugs, solve issues and get better performance. If your smart phone is Android, iOS, Windows Phone or other OS, try to upgrade to the latest version. Also update your mobile Apps too.

Always the latest version lonely is not secure if you don’t have installed any antivirus. Most well-known antivirus will secure your devices against viruses, worms, and spywares. But it will not be keeping it secure from installing pirate apps by you. A pirate app might have some viruses or tracking codes. So don’t install app from unknown source and  keep your devices OS and Apps up to date for security reasons.

3. Pirate and Cracked Apps

A pirate or cracked app might have some viruses or tracking codes to collect your system cookies and personal information illegally. Certainly, most anti virus software collects user information as well, to improve their functionality and performance for upcoming version.

4. Connecting to Public Internet

There are a lot of free wireless signal around when you are outside home. Connecting to internet and checking your social media network or emails push you to use these free Internets. Before connecting your mobile, make sure that it should be quite secure or don’t connect them.

I strongly recommend you that do not connect your mobile to public network when you are not sure about the owners.

5. Multi User Devices

For computer, always assign the appropriate permission for users. If you are admin and know computer security, then remove the others from admins group and they will not bring changes to your system without your permission.

Your mobile is always your own and no one should work with. But sometime you can’t  your friends will get your mobile. For this situation apply your own policy. Keep your eyes on person that working with your mobile. If he/she is not care about security, don’t give your mobile or lock it with a secure password.

Most antivirus has builtin app locker to lock your apps. The best one I recommend you is CM Antivirus. It will take a photo and send to your email when someone want to enter a wrong password. Yes, that is really fantastic.

6. Encrypt Your Devices Storage

Encryption will help you to secure hard disks and memory cards information. It will change the clear data to cipher which non readable data for an unauthorized access. In Windows Bit locker is best and compatible. For mobile devices, do it from settings and encryption section.

7. Backup Your Personal Files

This is the most important step’s you should apply on your mobile and computer. A weekly backup schedules will help you to back up your personal files and photos. In case of losing or crash a device, you must have a copy of your files and documents.

In Windows use File history to back up your personal files. For mobile devices connect to an online could such as Google Drive, One Drive, or iCloud for backup solution.

Conclusion

While you are trying update your system apps and operating system, try to keep update you knowledge as well. Subscribe to security news websites and be aware of most recent information security.

Photo credit: OneDrive

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In previews article about securing or Hack Wireless Network “5 Steps to Secure your home Wireless Network” we understand pretty enough for securing home Wireless Network. But now it’s time to know how the hackers break and get access to your Wireless Access Point WAP?

In this article, I’m going to show you 5 ways to pen test a wireless network. It’s all for educational purpose only.

The Tools we need is Kali Linux or Backtrack. Download the latest Kali Linux from here.

First one is using Wifite to capture Wireless traffic and save it as a file, and next crack the saved Client handshake in the file with aircrack and creating word list with Crunch.

In order to do this, open terminal and type wifite and hit enter.

Let the Wifite search and find all Wireless SSIDs.

When you find them press Ctrl+C to stop searching and select the number of networks you want to hack it.

In the point of WPS Attack, press Ctrl+C to reject the WPS Attack.

Wifite forced the clients to authenticate with WAP by sending de-authenticate request.

Authentication is the process of sending user name and password from client to WAP. When the clients send request, the packet will be captured by Wifite. It continues lessening for handshake…

Now it found, captured and saved a handshake packets.

Now try to crack the captured files with Aircrack and Crunch. To do this type the commands like the screenshot and press enter.

With the Crunch create password list and the aircrack check them to find the password.

It takes time too much just for numbers but be patent, and if you try to crack alphabets it’s possible but needs more time and a strong processor.

The Second way: Using airmon-ng to set the wireless card to monitoring mode and airodump-ng for capturing clients handshake. For cracking again you must use aircrack with a password list.

Continue…

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