More password cracking action from Null Byte! Today we aren't going to be cracking passwords per se, rather, we are going to learn the basics of generating rainbow tables and how to use them. First, let's go over how passwords are stored and recovered. Passwords are normally ...more
Password cracking is a specialty of some hackers, and it's often thought that raw computing power trumps everything else. That is true in some cases, but sometimes it's more about the wordlist. Making a custom, targeted wordlist can cut down cracking time considerably, and Wor ...more
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 cus ...more
Hi again, Just wanted to share a neat little code that I found way back, when I was presented with a spreadsheet which was locked and asked to ''unlock'' it or do whatever it takes to enable the user to edit it's contents. Well, I'm not one to say nay to a challenge, however ...more
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 ...more
Everybody knows not to store sensitive information in unencrypted files, right? PDFs and ZIP files can often contain a treasure trove of information, such as network diagrams, IP addresses, and login credentials. Sometimes, even certain files that are encrypted aren't safe fro ...more
You may have asked yourself, "How do hackers take my password, if the website owner can't?" The answer is simple. When a website stores your login password for the site, it is run through a cryptographic hash function before it enters the database (if the website isn't Sony). ...more
This is a great tutorial on how to use Backtrack 2 to crack a local computer for access. You can either completely change the password or you can wipe it and restore the password so nobody knows you were there Part 1 of 3 - How to Crack local passwords for access to a computer ...more
How to Crack Passwords Faster by Putting Your GPU to Work with HashcatSecurity on the internet is always changing. Not too long ago, having a 10 character password meant that you were safe from all forms of hash cracking. Hash cracking is when you take a string of characters t ...more
This is a how-to –video on using hydra 5.4 to crack FTP passwords. This video is intended for educational purpose only. It reveals the basics of hacking a FTP server using dictionary search technique. Here are the steps involved. 1) Download the software hydra 5.4 form the ...more
Learn how to use the Backtrack Linux distro and the Aircrack-ng WiFi security app to crack a WEP key. The process is simple. For more information, including step-by-step instructions, and to get started testing the security of your own WiFi networks, watch this hacker's how-to.
A flaw in WPS, or WiFi Protected Setup, known about for over a year by TNS, was finally exploited with proof of concept code. Both TNS, the discoverers of the exploit and Stefan at .braindump have created their respective "reaver" and "wpscrack" programs to exploit the WPS vul ...more
Lifehacker posts an article on the art of cracking weak passwords, courtesy of Internet standards expert, CEO of web company iFusion Labs, and blogger John Pozadzides. Pozadzides certainly knows a thing or two about password logic. (Note: this information is not intended to ha ...more
Tutorial showing how to crack the admin password on Windows XP using two downloadable tools. Crack a Windows XP admin password. Click through to watch this video on tricklife.com
Did you forget your Windows XP password or do you just want to see what is on your parents account? This tutorial will teach you how to find out someone's Windows XP password.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! I have already done a few tutorials on password cracking, including ones for Linux and Windows, WEP and WPA2, and even online passwords using THC Hydra. Now, I thought it might be worthwhile to begin a series on password cracking in general. ...more
Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! Last week, I started off my password cracking series with an introduction on the principles and technologies involved in the art of cracking passwords. In past guides, I showed some specific tools and techniques for cracking Windows, onlin ...more
Pyrit is one of the most powerful WPA/WPA2 cracking tools in a hacker's arsenal, with the ability to benchmark a computer's CPU speeds, analyze capture files for crackable handshakes, and even tap into GPU password-cracking power. To demonstrate how quickly it can hack a WPA/W ...more
Cracking the password for WPA2 networks has been roughly the same for many years, but a newer attack requires less interaction and info than previous techniques and has the added advantage of being able to target access points with no one connected. The latest attack against t ...more
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Several of you have written me asking how to crack passwords. The answer, in part, depends upon whether you have physical access to the computer, what operating system you are running, and how strong the passwords are. In this first install ...more
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 e ...more
Welcome back, my apprentice hackers! In this series on password cracking, I have been attempting to develop your skills in the age-old art of password cracking. Although it might seem like a simple and straightforward exercise, those of you who have attempted password crackin ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! In my series on cracking passwords, I began by showing off some basic password-cracking principles; developed an efficient password-cracking strategy; demonstrated how to use Hashcat, one of the most powerful password-cracking programs; and sh ...more
Welcome back, my eager hackers! In recent blogs, I've demonstrated how to grab password hashes remotely using Metasploit's meterpreter and pwdump. Once we have the Windows passwords from the SAM file, we can then crack these hashes using tools such as Cain and Abel. In this ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Continuing with my series on how to crack passwords, I now want to introduce you to one of the newest and best designed password crackers out there—hashcat. The beauty of hashcat is in its design, which focuses on speed and versatility. It ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! In a recent tutorial, I showed how the SNMP protocol can be a gold mine of information for reconnaissance on a potential target. If you haven't already, I strongly suggest that you read it before progressing here, as little of this will make m ...more
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! In an earlier tutorial, I had introduced you to two essential tools for cracking online passwords—Tamper Data and THC-Hydra. In that guide, I promised to follow up with another tutorial on how to use THC-Hydra against web forms, so here we ...more
Windows 10 passwords stored as NTLM hashes can be dumped and exfiltrated to an attacker's system in seconds. The hashes can be very easily brute-forced and cracked to reveal the passwords in plaintext using a combination of tools, including Mimikatz, ProcDump, John the Ripper, ...more
Dr. Michael Pound, a computer science researcher and professor at the University of Nottingham, uses hashcat and 4 GPUs in parallel to go through 1o billion hashes a second in this Computerphile video. He calls his deep-learning server the "Beast." If you're new to cracking pa ...more
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! Not too long ago, I showed how to find various online devices using Shodan. As you remember, Shodan is a different type of search engine. Instead of indexing the content of websites, it pulls the banner of web servers on all types of onlin ...more
Welcome, my hacker novitiates! As part of my series on hacking Wi-Fi, I want to demonstrate another excellent piece of hacking software for cracking WPA2-PSK passwords. In my last post, we cracked WPA2 using aircrack-ng. In this tutorial, we'll use a piece of software develop ...more
An internet connection has become a basic necessity in our modern lives. Wireless hotspots (commonly known as Wi-Fi) can be found everywhere! If you have a PC with a wireless network card, then you must have seen many networks around you. Sadly, most of these networks are sec ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers. When Wi-Fi was first developed in the late 1990s, Wired Equivalent Privacy was created to give wireless communications confidentiality. WEP, as it became known, proved terribly flawed and easily cracked. You can read more about that in my b ...more
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 additio ...more
A weak password is one that is short, common, or easy to guess. Equally bad are secure but reused passwords that have been lost by negligent third-party companies like Equifax and Yahoo. Today, we will use Airgeddon, a wireless auditing framework, to show how anyone can crack ...more
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! A short while back, I began a new series on database hacking, and now it's time to continue and extend your education in that field. As you know, the database contains all of the most valuable info for the hacker, including personally identifi ...more
While password cracking and WPS setup PIN attacks get a lot of attention, social engineering attacks are by far the fastest way of obtaining a Wi-Fi password. One of the most potent Wi-Fi social engineering attacks is Wifiphisher, a tool that blocks the internet until desperat ...more
Despite the security concerns that have plagued Facebook for years, most people are sticking around and new members keep on joining. This has led Facebook to break records numbers with over 1.94 billion monthly active users, as of March 2017 — and around 1.28 billion daily act ...more
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! When Wi-Fi was first developed and popularized in the late '90s, security was not a major concern. Unlike wired connections, anyone could simply connect to a Wi-Fi access point (AP) and steal bandwidth, or worse—sniff the traffic. The first a ...more
With a simple social engineering trick, sudo passwords can be captured in seconds without the target's knowledge. The passwords can then be saved to a file or exfiltrated to another computer on the network. After exploiting a system, penetration tester's and hackers will ofte ...more
If you have any doubt about how secure that strong password you created really is, there's an easy way to check online. Just visit HowSecureIsMyPassword.net, which uses a combination of math and statistics to determine how long it would take for a PC to crack your password. It ...more
Want to take advantage of your neighbor's super fast Wi-Fi connection? If they're smart, they probably have it password protected (otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, would you?). But if you have an Android phone, you can get back at them for always parking in your spot an ...more
Archiving and compression is a great way to store and prepare files for sending. You can reduce the size of a file, turn a group of files into a single file, and even encrypt and password the contents! Just take a look at this image to see how much it compressed a 28GB text fi ...more
Been hacked once? Twice? Maybe more? You thought abc123 was the only password that is both 6 characters wide and easy to remember? I have some suggestions in store for you. Just read on... An Introduction There are passwords that look tremendously sexy (as opposed to gibberi ...more
WikiLeaks. In recent weeks, it's been the hottest topic on the web. It's been attacked on a multinational level by political influence peddling. First, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman swayed Amazon's decision to stop hosting WikiLeaks. Then, Tableau Software removed graphs from th ...more
With FarmVille being one of the hottest Facebook games on the market, it's no wonder it's the primary target for scams and virus downloads. Anyone playing FarmVille is at risk, but the primary targets are those looking to improve their gameplay and build their farms and neighb ...more
Whatever your reasons for doing it, if you are trying to hack passwords, it helps to have the right software for getting the job done. With the Cain and Abel program, you will be well on your way to hacking even the toughest personal passwords. Visit us at bleedingedgesecurit ...more
How did it happen? How did your ultra-secure WPA password on your wireless network get broken into? Well, you might have just found yourself at the mercy of a cracker. Crackers are malicious computer users who specialize in breaking into things. Whether it be passwords, login ...more
Following the first part in this series on advanced cracking techniques, we are going to go over how we can intelligently crack passwords using the old-fashioned bruteforce method. These unique cracking techniques aren't widely used, because most crackers are Script Kiddies wh ...more
This episode of Full Disclosure demonstrates how to hack/crack MD5 password hashes. MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a hash function commonly used by websites to encrypt passwords. MD5 is a one-way hash; therefore, to crack the password you most try every possible dictionar ...more
In this tutorial, we learn how to make a safe password. Passwords are essential, and need to be safe for when browsing around the internet. Other people aren't meant to be able to nose around your information, so protect your information with an indecipherable password. Don't ...more
I have had a lot of people ask me, "How does my neighbor keep getting into my wireless?!". Chances are, these people are all using WEP, a deprecated wireless encryption protocol. Either that, or you are using one weak WPA passphrase. If someone can access your wireless networ ...more
There are loads of reasons for somebody to want to recover a Windows password, and there are lots of different ways of doing it. My favorite of all of these ways is to use a piece of software called Ophcrack because: The free tables are suitable for almost all uses (I've neve ...more
I've seen numerous tutorials on how to create a "strong" password. This makes me laugh. These titles imply "one" password, which is wrong in and of itself. A person should have many passwords, all different, and all extremely long. People may ask how they're supposed to rememb ...more
In this clip, you'll learn how to use the Backtrack 3 Linux distro and Aircrack-ng WiFi security app to crack the password to a WEP-protected wireless network. The process is simple. For more information, including step-by-step instructions, and to get started testing the secu ...more
Have you ever forgotten your password and didn't know how to get back on your computer? Or ever had an annoying roommate you wanted to play a trick on to teach them a lesson? Or perhaps overly religious parents who think the internet is of the devil and won't let you read onli ...more
Have an old-school tabula recta lying around? No? Then just print out the chart below. Nothing ensures better password security than this centuries-old cipher technique. Here's how it works, via Wikipedia: "Using a tabula recta, each alphabet is shifted one letter to the left ...more
In this video we learn how to crack WPA using Back Track. The first step is the boot into Back Track using a VMware Virtual Machine Image. Next you need to open a shell console. In the console you will type "airmon-ng" and press enter. This does a check to find the wireless gu ...more
What do you do with a password protected WinRAR archive? You hack it - naturally. And how do you hack it? First, download RAR Password Recovery v1.1 RC17 then follow along with this video to crack almost any WinRAR password. So much for security.
When Windows stores a password, it is done so by hashing the password in an LM hash and putting it in the Windows SAM file. In the scary moment that you lose your password, but don't want to pay some geek to have full root access to your computer, you need to recover it using ...more