Question

What is the best brute force password cracking tools currently available?

Asked by: Beach_Boy

As a Certified IT professional I like to build up my "tool kit" and I hear that a good brute force tool is something we should have and know about.  Does anyone have experience with these tools and if so what do you use and what can you tell me about them?

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Asked On
2009-03-05 at 12:23:56ID24203259
Topics

Security Software

,

Microsoft Operating Systems

,

Network Software Firewalls

Participating Experts
3
Points
125
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: frostburnPosted on 2009-03-05 at 12:44:25ID: 23810396

Hi there,

In my experience the brute force application you use it depends on what you are trying to gain access to.

For example, I have had users forget passwords to Office documents or PDF documents that they needed to access.

In those cases I used software by Elcomsoft:

http://www.elcomsoft.com/products.html

You will see they have products for a wide variety of applications.

Hope this helps
-FB

 

by: rdoctanePosted on 2009-03-05 at 13:40:46ID: 23811119


<a href="http://www.openwall.com/john/">John the Ripper</a> is for cracking passwords, which might not be what you need, but just in case -- it's probably a nice thing to have in your toolkit.

<a href="www.hoobie.net/brutus/">Brutus</a> is probably the best I've seen for FTP/HTTP/SOCKS brute forcing.

<a href="http://www.oxid.it/cain.html">Cain and Abel</a> belongs in any toolkit, although it requires a driver to be install for full functionality.

Being a technician, or whatever you are, the main things you need to know how to do is how to stop brute forcing attacks and how they work.  Each of the above programs also support dictionary attacks, which go through a predefined text file to look for common passwords.  They also support hybrid attacks, which does dictionary + brute forcing.  If you need any other information, just post and I'll try to get back in a relatively timely manner.

 

by: ato26Posted on 2009-03-07 at 21:01:39ID: 23828027

The most useful password tool I've used for a field tech toolkit was Ophcrack.  Only applies to XP and Vista (seperate boot disks) for user password recovery but will get just about anything 14 characters or less.  You just boot off the CD and let it go all on it's own.  I changed my whole password policy because of it.  It got my 12 character password that was alphanumeric with 2 extended characters and no words in under 3 minutes.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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