MD5 can be cracked only by brute-force method. The cracker program
will apply the MD5 algorithm on passwords and check if it is same as the
given passwd file. This is done using a dictionary and if that wasn't
successful it tries the incremental mode where combinations of words
based on a wordlist are tried. This method can run for several days.
I tried John, the Ripper on a sample passwd file and found the root
password within 4-5 hours (siz lettered). Now I am trying on a passwd
file from my college computer. It is nearly 11-12 letters(tried to peep at
the keyboard) and will run for many weeks on my system.
If someone can help me to find it (has a fast processor) please contact me.
-----
Srinivasan R
----- Original Message -----
From: "Suraj" <suraj@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Praveen" <praveen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Arjun Baskaran" <lindowsarjun@xxxxxxxxx>; <ilugc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 3:40 PM
Subject: [linux] Re: [Ilugc] PCI Sound Card
Praveen wrote:also
,----
| MD5 is one way encryption IOW hash. I think brute-force attack is the
| only way to crack it which is virtually impossible for a well-formed
| password.
`----
You can try 'jack' (from 'jack the ripper') to do a dictionary attack
to crack the password. Only weak passwords get cracked this
way. However if you want to find out passwords on your own machine,
its not what you should be doing. Look at the friendly man pages of
gpasswd, passwd (do a man -k passwd and read all the relevant man
pages).
cheers,
-Suraj
--
,-----------------[http://www.symonds.net/~suraj/]---o
| Muttuswamy Dikshitar not only brought rains with amritavarshini, but
| brought a halt to the torrentous pour with the same composition by juststhambhaya
| replacing the last three words to become `sthambahaya sthambhaya
| !!`
`------------------------------[suraj@xxxxxxxxxxx]---o
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