What is password cracking?

Password cracking process involves recovering a password from storage locations or from data, transmitted by a computer system on network. Password cracking term refers to group of techniques used to get password from a data system.

Purpose and reason of password cracking includes gaining an unauthorized access to a computer system or it can be recovery of forgotten password. There might be another reason of using password cracking technique that is for testing password strength so hacker could not hack into system.

Password cracking is normally performed thought repetitive process in which computer applies different combinations of password till the exact match.

Term brute force password cracking may also be referred as brute force attack. Brute force password cracking is respective process of guessing password, in this process software or tool creates a large number of password combinations. Basically it’s a trail-and-error technique used by software to obtain password information from system.

A brute force attack are normally used by hackers when there is no chance of taking advantage of encrypted system weakness or by security analysis experts to test an organization’s network security .This method of password cracking is very fast for short length passwords but for long length passwords dictionary attack technique is normally used.

Time taken by brute force password cracking software to crack password is normally depend upon speed of system and internet connection.

GPU is graphics processing unit, sometimes also called visual processing unit. Before talking about GPU password cracking we must have some understanding about hashes. When user enter password the password information stored in form of computer hashes using the one-way hashing algorithm.

In this password cracking technique using GPU software take a password guess and look through hashing algorithm and compare it or match it with the existing hashes till the exact match.

GPU can perform mathematical functions in parallel as GPU have hundreds of core that gives massive advantage in cracking password. GPU is much faster than CPU so that’s the reason of using GPU instead of CPU.

CUDA Compute Unified Device Architecture is a model for programming and a platform that perform computations in parallel, created by NVIDIA for graphic processing.

CUDA Password cracking includes cracking passwords using Graphics card which have GPU chip, GPU can perform mathematical functions in parallel so the speed of cracking password is faster than CPU.GPU have many 32bit chips on it that perform this operation very quickly.

We can easily access CUDA through libraries, directives and with the help of different programming languages that includes C, C++ and FORTRAN.

Given below is the list of Top10 Password cracking tools.

1. Cain and Abel : Top password cracking tool for Windows

Cain & Abel is one of the top cracking tool for password cracking and password recovery for Windows OS.

Cain & Abel can use techniques of Dictionary Attack, Brute-Force and Cryptanalysis attacks to crack encrypted passwords. So it only uses the weakness of system to crack password. GUI Interface of software is very simple and easy to use. But have availability limitation, tool only available for window based systems .Cain & Abel tool have many good features some of the features of tool are discussed below:

• Used for WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) cracking
• Have ability to record conversation over IP
• Cab be used as Network Password Sniffer
• Ability to resolve addresses IP to MAC.
• Can crack verity of hashes including LM and NT hashes, IOS and PIX hashes, RADIUS hashes, RDP passwords, and lots more than that.

http://www.oxid.it

2. John the Ripper : Multi-platform, Powerful, Flexible password cracking tool

John the Ripper is a free multi or cross platform password cracking software. Its called multi platform as it combines different password cracking features into one package.

It’s primarily used to crack weak UNIX passwords but also available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. We can run this software against different password encryptions including many password hashes normally found in different UNIX versions. These hashes are DES, LM hash of Windows NT/2000/XP/2003, MD5, and AFS.

• Supportive with Brute force password cracking and dictionary attacks
• Multi platform
• Available free for use
• Pro version is also available with additional features

http://www.openwall.com

3. Aircrack : Fast and effective WEP/WPA cracking tool

Aircrack is a combination different tools used for Wifi, WEP and WPA passwords cracking. With the help of these tools you can crack WEP/WPA passwords easily and effectively

Brute force, FMS attack, and dictionary attacks techniques can be used to crack WEP/WPA passwords. Basically it collects and analyzes encrypted packets then using its different tool crack password out of the packets. Although aircrack is available for Windows but there are different issues with this software if we use this in Windows environment, so it’s best when we use it in Linux environment.

• Supportive with both Brute force and dictionary attacks cracking techniques
• Available for Windows and Linux
• Available in live CD

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/

4. THC Hydra : Multiple services supportive, Network authentication cracker

THC Hydra is a supper fast network password cracking tool. It uses network to crack remote systems passwords.

It can be used to crack passwords of different protocols including HTTPS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, Cisco, CVS, SQL, SMTP etc. It will give you option that you may supply a dictionary file that contains list of possible passwords. It’s best when we use it in Linux environment.

• Fast cracking speed
• Available for Windows, Linux ,Solaris and OS X
• New modules can be added easily to enhance features
• Supportive with Brute force and dictionary attacks

Site for Download:

5. RainbowCrack : New Innovation in Password Hash Cracker

RainbowCrack software uses rainbow tables to crack hashes, in other words we can say it uses process of a large-scale time-memory trade for effective and fast password cracking.

Large-scale-time-memory-trade-off is a process of computing all hashes and plain text using a selected hash algorithm. After calculations, obtained results are stored in the tables called rainbow table. Process of creating rainbow tables is very time consuming but when its done software works very fast.

Password cracking using rainbow table is faster than the normal brute force attack method. It’s available for Linux and Windows operating system.

• Support verity of Rainbow tables
• Runs on Windows (XP/Vista/7/8) and Linux operating systems (x86 and x86_64)
• Simple in use

Site for Download:

http://project-rainbowcrack.com/

6. OphCrack : Tool for Windows password cracking

OphCrack used to crack Windows user passwords with the help of rainbow tables that are available in a bootable CD.

Ophcrack is completely free to download, Windows based password cracker that uses rainbow tables to crack Windows user passwords. It normally cracks LM and NTLM hashes. Software has simple GUI and can runs on different platforms.

• Available for Windows but also available for Linux, Mac, Unix, and OS X
• Uses for LM hashes of Windows and NTLM hashes of Windows vista.
• Rainbow tables available free and easily for Windows
• To simplify the process of cracking Live CD is available

Site for Download:

7. Brutus : A brute force attack cracker for remote systems

Brutus is the fastest, most flexible, and most popular software used to crack remote system passwords. It guess password through applying different permutations or by using a dictionary.

It can be used for different network protocols including HTTP, FTP, IMAP, NNTP and other types such as SMB, Telnet etc. It also gives you facility of creating your own authentication type. It also includes extra options of load and resume, so process can be paused when required and you can resume process when you want.

It is only available for windows operation systems. Tool has a limitation that it has not been updated since 2000.

Features of Brutus

• Available for Windows
• Can be used with different network protocols
• Tool have many good extra features
• Support SOCK proxy for all types of authentications
• Capability of error handling and recovery
• Authentication engine is multi stage

Site for Download:

http://www.hoobie.net/brutus/

8. L0phtCrack : Smart tool for Windows password recovery

Just like OphCrack tool L0phtCrack is also a Windows passwords recovery tool uses hashes to crack passwords, with extra features of Brute force and dictionary attacks.

It normally gains access to these hashes from directories, network servers, or domain controllers. It is capable of doing hash extraction from 32 & 64 bit Windows systems, multiprocessor algorithms, scheduling, and can also perform decoding and monitoring networks. Yet it is still the easiest to use password auditing and recovery software available.

Features of L0phtCrack

• Available for Windows XP, NT, 2000, Server 2003,and Server 2008
• Can work in both 32- and 64-bit environments
• Extra feature of schedule routine auditing on daily, weekly, monthly bases
• After run it provide complete Audit Summary in report page

Site for Download:

www.l0phtcrack.com/

9. Pwdump : Password recovery tool for Windows

Pwdump is actually different Windows programs that are used to provide LM and NTML hashes of system user accounts.

Pwdump password cracker is capable of extracting LM, NTLM and LanMan hashes from the target in Windows, in case if Syskey is disabled, software has the ability to extract in this condition.

Software is update with extra feature of password histories display if history is available. Extracted data will be available in form that is compatible with L0phtcrack.

Recently software is updated to new version called Fgdump as Pwdump not work fine when any antivirus program is running.

Features of Pwdump

• Available for Windows XP, 2000
• Powerful extra feature are available in new version of Pwdump
• Ability to run multithreaded
• It can perform cachedump (Crashed credentials dump) and pstgdump (Protected storage dump)

Site for Download:

http://www.darknet.org.uk/

10. Medusa : Speedy network password cracking tool

Medusa is remote systems password cracking tool just like THC Hydra but its stability, and fast login ability prefer him over THC Hydra.

It is speedy brute force, parallel and modular tool. Software can perform Brute force attack against multiple users, hosts, and passwords. It supports many protocols including AFP, HTTP, CVS, IMAP, FTP, SSH, SQL, POP3, Telnet and VNC etc.

Medusa is pthread-based tool, this feature prevent unnecessarily duplicate of information. All modules available as an independent .mod file, so no modification is required to extend the list that supports services for brute forcing attack.

Features of Medusa

• Available for Windows, SunOS, BSD, and Mac OS X
• Capable of performing Thread based parallel testing
• Good feature of Flexible user input
• Due to parallel processing speed of cracking is very fast

Site for Download:

http://www.darknet.org.uk/