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Hashcat is the world’s fastest and most advanced password recovery utility, supporting five unique modes of attack for over 200 highly optimised hashing algorithms. Hashcat currently supports CPUs, GPUs, and other hardware accelerators on Linux, Windows, and MacOS, and has facilities to help enable distributed password cracking.
Overview
The latest release of Hashcat 4.0 makes it the fastest password cracking tool currently available, at the time of writing this article. One of its key advantages is the utilisation of the GPU and CPU to crack popular hashing algorithms to bypass several security protocols such as WPA/WPA2.
Jens Steube, the creator of the Hashcat tool, has decided to make available the source code of Hashcat and oclHashcat open to the public. According to hashcat’s repository on GitHub, anyone is welcomed and encouraged to contribute; provided that your code is of sufficient quality. However, prior submitting a pull request, you will need to ensure your code adheres to the following requirements:
- Licensed under MIT license, or dedicated to public domain (BSD, GPL, etc. code is incompatible)
- Adheres to gnu99 standard
- Compiles cleanly with no warnings when compiled with
-W -Wall -std=gnu99 - Uses Allman-style code blocks & indentation
- Uses 2-spaces as indentation or a tab if it’s required (for example: Makefiles)
- Uses lower-case function and variable names
- Avoids the use of
!and uses positive conditionals wherever possible (e.g.,if (foo == 0)instead ofif (!foo), andif (foo)instead ofif (foo != 0)) - Use code like array[index + 0] if you also need to do array[index + 1], to keep it aligned
You can use GNU Indent to help assist you with the style requirements:
indent -st -bad -bap -sc -bl -bli0 -ncdw -nce -cli0 -cbi0 -pcs -cs -npsl -bs -nbc -bls -blf -lp -i2 -ts2 -nut -l1024 -nbbo -fca -lc1024 -fcOn the below links, you can find the latest release of hashcat 4.0 tool:
| File Name | Release | Date | Download Link | File Signature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hashcat binaries | v4.0.0 | 2017.10.27 | Download | PGP |
| hashcat sources * | v4.0.0 | 2017.10.27 | Download | PGP |
Installation
Download the latest release and unpack it in the desired location. Please remember to use 7z x when unpacking the archive from the command line to ensure full file paths remain intact.
Usage
Please refer to the Hashcat Wiki and the output of --help for usage information and general help. A list of frequently asked questions may also be found here. The Hashcat Forums also contains a plethora of information.