We live in digital era, and in
the world of technology everything is password protected. There are many ways
to crack the password such as social engineering, try and error method, etc.
but the three only two most successful methods of password cracking i.e. Dictionary
attack and Brute force. Both of them has there perks and disadvantages. And in
today’s article we will focus on dictionary attack as it comes handy and is the
best method to crack a password.
Dictionary attack: Dictionary
attack is an attempted entry in a digital system which uses a precompiled list
of possible passwords rather entering them one at a time. Basically, it an
evolved and advanced form of trial and error as it brings result fast and is
efficient. I am sure that there are many ways for a dictionary attack but I am
going to give you five best ones.
The first is Crunch. The best thing about crunch is
you can use it both offline and online. It generates wordlist according to your
requirements. You can give maximum and minimum length of the password and also
provide it with a character-set which you want it use while creating your
dictionary. And then crunch will create you dictionary while keeping your
requirements at its priority. Hence, a dictionary will be created with all the
possible combinations.
Now let’s see how to use it.
Observe its syntax first:
crunch àcrunch is the key
word which notifies the system to use this tool.
à here you specify
the minimum length characters you want.
àhere you specify
maximum length of characters.
àhere you specify
the characters you want it to use while creating the dictionary.
-t à this is optional
but here you can specify pattern in with you want your character-set to be.
-o à here you give the
path where you want your dictionary file to be saved.
For instance open the terminal
of kali and type:
crunch 3 4 ignite –o /root/Desktop/dict.txt
Now the above command will
create dictionary with the possible combinations from the word ignite which
will length from 3 to 4 characters. The file will be saved in text form on the
Desktop. Similar is shown in the image below:
Let’s now read dict.txt file and for that type:
cat dict.txt
All the words will be displayed the following manner:
Next way is by using Cewl. Now
Cewl works somewhat like John The ripper and is written in ruby. When targeting
people of corporate sector or business world; this is the tool for you. As you
all know it is in human psyche to use the words significant to them and which
occur in their day to day life. Cewl works on the URL you provide it. It will take
that URL and crawl its way to the depth of 2 links (by default, you can
increase or decrease the depth to) and will search every word which has the possibility
of being a password. With all these words it will generate a wordlist for you
to use as your dictionary in dictionary attack. Let’s observe it syntax:
·
Cewl à
indicated the tool which is being used
·
à
here give the URL that you want to use as a foundation of your dictionary.
·
-d à
here, give the number of links you want it to go through while creating your
dictionary.
·
-w
à
here, give the path where you want to store all the possible passwords.
·
For example in the terminal of kali type :
The above command will create a dictionary file using the
word from the URL.
Let’s look the dictionary file
it just created and for that type:
cat dict.txt
All the words will be
displayed in following manner:
Our next way is using a third
party tool i.e. cup. Previous tools were pre-installed but you will have to
install this one on your own. To install it please type:
CUPP is developed in python and makes very personalized tool when
it comes to password cracking. Studies show that while setting up password,
humans show a similar pattern such as they tend make password personalize by
adding their date of birth, anniversary date, pet’s name, etc. and CUPP focuses
on this weakness and helps to crack password effectively. Before creating a
wordlist, it will ask you required information about your target. And will
create the wordlist as per the information. Now, let’s study how it works
set-by-step. Initiate cupp first by typing:
./cupp.py –i
Once initiated it will ask you
the information about your target as shown in the image:
Give the required information and
your wordlist will be generated as follows:
Next up tool is Pydictor. This is a special tool as it
is the only tool that creates the wordlist both in normal words and in base64
encryption. So if someone is smart enough to keep a safe password this tool
will help you with it. Pydictor is written in python. There are two method to
crack the password using this tool à
one creates a normal wordlist the other creates wordlist in base64 form. We
will try both the methods. But first things first, this is a third party tool
so we will have to install it and for it please type :
git clone https://github.com/LandGrey/pydictor.git
Once the tool is installed and
ready to use, give it instructions on bases of what you want it to generate the
wordlist using. Understand the syntax first:
./pydictor.py –len -base d –o
·
./pydictor.py
à
initiates the tool
·
--len à
indicates the length of characters
·
à
here, give minimum length of characters
·
à
here, give maximum length of
characters
·
-o à
indicates the path
·
à
here, give path where you want your wordlist to be saved
Let’s give the command to
generate the wordlist now:
./pydictor.py –len 5 5 –base d –o /root/Desktop/dict.txt
Let’s read the file created to
have a look at the words that it has generated. And for that type:
cat dict.txt/BASE_5_5_d_071743.txt
The other method using the
similar tool gives us password in base64 encoding. Let’s study the syntax first:
./pydictor.py –len -base d –encode –o
·
./pydictor.py
à
initiates the tool
·
--len à
indicates the length of characters
·
à
here, give minimum length of characters
·
à
here, give maximum length of
characters
·
--encode à
indicated the type of encryption/encoding
·
à here, give the type of
encoding you want
·
-o à
indicates the path
·
à
here, give path where you want your wordlist to be saved
Let’s give the command to
generate wordlist:
./pydictor.py –len 5 5 –encode b64 –o /root/Desktop/dict.txt
The above command will generate
wordlist in base64 let’s have a look at it:
cat dict.txt/BASE_5_5_d_070433.txt
The last and next up tool is Dymerge. Dymerge is interesting and
powerful tool made in python. Basically what dymerge does is takes the
previously made multiple dictionaries and merges them into a single one, so all
the dictionaries can you use in one go while you sit back and relax. You can
merge any number of dictionaries either default ones or custom made. This is again
a third party tool so let’s install it first:
git clone https://github.com/k4m4/dymerge.git
Let’s understand its syntax:
·
Python
dymerge.py à initiates the tool
·
à
here, give path of the first dictionary you want to merge
·
à
here, give path of the second dictionary you want to merge
·
-o à
indicates the path where the resulted wordlist will be saved
·
à
here, give the path where the final wordlist list will be saved
Now that we have understood the
syntax let’s try the command:
python dymerge.py /root/Desktop/digit.txt /root/Desktop/words.txt –s –o
/root/Desktop/dict.txt
Here, I have taken two wordlists
(you can take more also), where one contains numbers and other contains
alphabets and merges them into one so you can use multiple dictionaries at the
same time.
Let’s have a look at the
dictionary that it has created:
cat dict-1.txt
