Password cracking process consists of retrieving a password from data or information storage locations, transmitted by a networked computer system. The term password cracking refers to the group of techniques used to obtain the password of a data system.
Purpose and reason of password cracking includes gaining unauthorized access to a computer system or it may be forgotten password recovery. There may be another reason to use the technique which is to test password strength so hacker could not hack into password system.
1. Cain and Abel: Best Passwords Tool for Windows
Cain & Abel is one of the top password cracking and password recovery tool for Windows operating systems.
Cain & Abel can use dictionary attack techniques, brute force and Cryptanalysis attacks to crack encrypted passwords. It only uses system weakness to crack passwords. Software interface is very simple and easy to use. But have the limitation of availability, tool is only available for window based systems. Cain & Abel tool have very good features, some of the features of the tool are discussed below:
Characteristics of Cain and Abel:
- Used for cracking WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
- They have the ability to record conversation over IP
- CAB is used as Network Password Sniffer
- Ability to resolve IP addresses to Mac.
It can crack verity of hashes like NT and LM hashes, IOS and PIX hashes, radio hashes, RDP passwords and much more than that.
2. John the Ripper: Cross-Platform, Powerful, Flexible Password Tool
John the Ripper is a free multi or cross platform password software. Its called multi platform which combines different passwords features in one package.
Mainly used to crack UNIX weak passwords but also available for Linux, Mac and Windows. We can run this software against different password encryption including many password hashes normally found in different versions of UNIX. These hashes are DES, Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 LM hashes, MD5, and AFS.
Characteristics of John the Ripper
- Support with brute force passwords and dictionary attacks
- Multi platform
- Available free for use
3. Aircrack: Fast and effective WEP/WPA cracking tool
Aircrack is a combination of different tools for Wifi, WEP and WPA password cracking. With the help of these tools you can crack WEP/WPA passwords easily and effectively
Dictionary attack, brute force and FMS attack techniques can be used to crack WEP/WPA passwords. It basically collects and analyzes the encrypted packets then using its different tool to crack passwords from the packets. Although aircrack is available for Windows, but there are various problems with this software if we use this in Windows environment, so it is best when we use it in Linux environment.
Features of Aircrack
- Support with brute force attacks and dictionary cracking techniques
- Available for Windows and Linux
- Available on live CD
4. THC Hydra: support multiple services, network authentication cracker
THC Hydra is a supper fast network password cracking tool. It uses the network to crack passwords of remote systems.
It can be used to crack passwords of different protocols like HTTPS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, Cisco, CVS, SQL, etc. of SMTP. It will give you the option that you can provide a dictionary file containing the list of possible passwords. The best is when we use it in a Linux environment.
THC Hydra Characteristics
- Fast cracking speed
- Available for Windows, Linux, Solaris and OS X
- New modules can be easily added to improve features
- Support with brute force and dictionary attacks
5. RainbowCrack: Innovation in Password Hash Cracker
RainbowCrack software uses rainbow tables to crack hashes, in other words we can say that it uses the process of a large-scale time-memory trade for fast and effective password cracking.
Large-Scale-Time-Memory-Trade-off is a process of computing all hashes and text using a selected hash algorithm. After calculations, obtained results are stored in the table called rainbow table. Rainbow table creation process is very slow but when your software actually works very fast.
Passwords using rainbow table is faster than normal brute force attack method. It is available for Linux and Windows operating system.
Features of Rainbow Crack
- Veracity of Rainbow Tables Help
- Runs on Windows (XP/Vista/7/8) and Linux (x86 and x86_64) operating systems
- simple in use
