Password Cracker Software
A password cracker software, which is often referred to as a password recovery tool, can be used to crack or recover the password either by removing the original password, after bypassing the data encryption, or by outright discovery of the password. In the process of password cracking, a very common methodology used to crack the user password is to repeatedly make guesses for the probable password and perhaps finally hitting on the correct one. It cannot be denied that whenever we are referring to cyber security, passwords are the most vulnerable security links. On the other hand if the password is too completed, the user might forget it. Password Cracker software are often used by the hackers to crack the password and access a system to manipulate it. Do not unethically use these software for hacking passwords.
In the next section you would be getting familiar with some of the popular Password Cracker tools which are used by hackers for password cracking.
Ophcrack
It is a free password cracker software which is based on the effective implementation of the rainbow tables. It runs on a number of Operating Systems like Mac OS X, Unix/Linux and Windows Operating System. It is equipped with real-time graphs for analyzing the passwords and is an open source software. Ophcrack has the capability to crack both NTLM hashes as well as LM hashes.
Medusa
Medusa is one of the best online brute-force, speedy, parallel password crackers which is available on the Internet. It has been designed by the members of the website foofus.net. It is also widely used in Penetration testing to ensure that the vulnerability of the system can be exposed and appropriate security measures can be taken against hacking.
RainbowCrack
Rainbow Crack as the name suggests, is a cracker for hashes with the Rainbow Tables. It runs on multiple operating systems such as Linux, Windows Vista, Windows XP (Windows Operating Systems). It supports both Graphical User Interface as well as Command line Interface. It's software which is used for password cracking by generating rainbow tables, fuzzing all the parameters.
Wfuzz
Wfuzz is a flexible tool for brute forcing Internet based applications. It supports many features like Multithreading, Header brute forcing, Recursion when discovering directories, Cookies, Proxy Support, hiding results and encoding the URLs to name a few. Wfuzz is a useful tool for finding unlinked resources like scripts, directories and servlets as well.
Brutus
Brutus is one of the most flexible and free password crackers which operates remotely. It is popular also because of its high speed and operates under operating systems such as Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows 9x. Currently it does not operate under the UNIX operating system. Brutus was initially designed to check network devices like routers for common as well as default passwords.
L0phtCrack
L0phtCrack which is now known as L0phtCrack6, is a tool which tests the strength of a password given, as well as to recover lost passwords on Microsoft Windows platform. Thus it is a tool for both password recovery as well as auditing the password. It uses techniques such as Rainbow tables, brute-force and dictionary to recover passwords.
Fgdump
Fgdump is a powerful cracking tool. In fact, it's much more powerful than pwdump6 as the latter has the tendency to hang whenever there is a presence of an antivirus. Fgdump has the capability to handle this problem of hanging by shutting down first. It later restarts the Antivirus software. It supports multi threading which is very relevant in the multitasking and multi-user environment.
THC Hydra
Every password security study has revealed that the biggest security weaknesses are the passwords. THC Hydra is a tool for cracking logins and it is flexible as it supports various protocols. It is very fast and at the same time, new modules can be easily added. Hydra can run on operating systems like Solaris 11, OSX, Windows and Linux.
John The Ripper
John the Ripper is a free software for password cracking which was originally designed for the Unix Operating System. At present, it can run on 15 Operating systems which includes 11 different versions of UNIX, Win32, DOS and BeOS. It has the capability to combine several password crackers into a single package which has made it one of the most popular cracking tools for hackers.
Aircrack
It is a network software suite used in 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks. It consists of tools such as a packet sniffer, detector and a WEP. This tool runs on both Windows and Linux Operating systems. It can work with any type of wireless network interface controller, provided the driver is supporting the raw monitoring mode.
Cain And Abel
Cain and Abel, often referred to as Cain, is a tool for recovering the password in the Windows platform. It has the capability to recover various kinds of passwords using techniques such as cracking the password hashes by using brute-forcing, dictionary attacks, cryptanalysis attacks and packet sniffing in the network.
IKECrack
The objective of this security tool is to locate the valid user identities in a Virtual Public Network along with the secret key combinations. Once this is accomplished, this information can be used easily by a hacker to have access to a VPN in an unauthorized manner
