Password crackers help you restore lost passwords and hack into an account. Here, top 8 password guessers are introduced in this post of MiniTool. You can pick one password cracker app to get your passwords back.
When you create an account, you are required to input a password so that you can verify the identity the next time you log into the account. However, you may forget the password after some time. How to get back the password to log into the account you have created before? Here comes the need of password crackers.
The password cracking tool can also help you get back the hacked password as well.
During the password cracking process, some techniques need to be used. You can read the content below to have an overall understanding.
- Dictionary attack: It includes the use of a wordlist to compare against user passwords.
- Brute force attack: It is similar to the dictionary attack. It cracks passwords by using algorithms that combine alpha-numeric characters and symbols.
- Guess: It guesses passwords by making use of vulnerabilities of passwords. For instance, qwerty, admin, and some other passwords are set as default passwords.
- Spidering: Most organizations use passwords that contain company information that can be found on company websites and social media. Then Spidering collects the information from these sources to come up with word lists.
- Rainbow table attack: This method uses pre-computed hashes.
#1. Hashcat
Hashcat is an open-source password cracker that is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux desktops. Besides, it also has mobile support for Android, iOS, and Windows mobile. It includes plenty of password cracking techniques from simple brute force attacks to hybrid masks with a wordlist.
However, the kinds of passwords that can be recovered by Hashcat are limited. It recovers passwords used for Wi-Fi and documents like PDF, Word files, and Excel files. As Hashcat can use both CPU and GPU even at the same time, it is quicker to crack multiple hashes simultaneously.
It’s worth noting that Hashcat is one of the fastest password cracking tools. What makes it stands out from the line is that it supports over 300 hash types like MD5, SHA3-512, ChaCha20, PBKDF2, Kerberos 5, 1Password, LastPass, KeePass, etc.
On the aspect of privacy security, Hashcat doesn’t store any cracked passwords on its servers. It only gives the user deciphered passwords. In addition, it won’t access or modify the user’s files in any way. It only deciphers passwords of selected files or the user’s Wi-Fi network. Only if the purpose is legal, using Hashcat is legal.
Before cracking passwords with Hashcat, you need to get the password hash by using tools like Mimikatz, Wireshark, and Metasploit.
#2. John the Ripper
Like Hashcat, John the Ripper is also an open-source password cracking tool. It means that the code is available to the public, so users don’t have to worry about the legality and potential malware or malicious programs in the software. It also has a pro version.
This password finder works on macOS, BeOS, OpenVMS, Linux, and Windows devices. It can recover passwords for database servers, operating systems, web applications, network traffic captures, encrypted private keys, disks & file systems, archives, and documents like Microsoft Office files, PDFs, and so on.
John the Ripper is a password guesser that can be used for remote and local password recovery. It uses Brute Force Attack and Dictionary Attacks to password cracking the encrypted items. This password cracker app has three main modes for cracking passwords: single crack, wordlist or dictionary attack, and an incremental or brute-force attack.
#3. CrackStation
CrackStation, a free web-based password finder, uses the dictionary attack technique to crack hashes. To be specific, it cracks password hashes through pre-computed lookup tables with more than 15 billion entries. It is available on Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms.
This password cracker supports protocols like LM, NTLM, md4, md5 (md_hex), md-half, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512, ripeMD160, whirlpool, MySQL 4.1+ (sha1 (sha_bin)), and QubesV3.1BackupDefaults. You need to note that only non-salted hashes without any attached random strings can be used.
CrackStation allows up to 20 non-salted hashes to be inputted on the interface. Any hashes that users crack are not stored in any way by the website according to the privacy policy. Nevertheless, CrackStation website claims that it is possible that connectors are being intercepted by government agencies like NSA.
#4. Brutus
Like CrackStation, Brutus is also an online password cracking tool. It uses Dictionary Attack to retrieve passwords. It helps you retrieve passwords and usernames from websites, applications, and operating systems. Please note that Brutus is only available for Windows systems.
Brutus can’t crack passwords of social media and email accounts. Moreover, it can’t hack passwords consisting of numbers, letters, and symbols.
This password cracker supports multiple platforms such as FTP, HTTP, POP3, SMB, Telnet, NetBus, IMAP, and NNTP. It also supports more than one connection (up to 60 simultaneous connections). You are not required to have any command-line knowledge or familiarity with the user to use Brutus.
#5. WFuzz
WFuzz attempts to crack passwords via a brute-force guessing attack. It also helps users find hidden resources like directories, servlets, and scripts. Additionally, it can find injection vulnerabilities in applications like XSS, SQL, LDAP, etc. It works on operating systems including mac, Linux, and Windows.
WFuzz uses a command-line interface, users may have to be familiar with commands to maximize the use of WFuzz. Before using this password finder, users can bring up all available commands by typing “-h” or “-help”. In terms of safety, there have been no reports of privacy breaches or safety concerns from WFuzz users.
This password cracker is suitable for security experts and web application developers. What’s more, WFuzz is legal to use providing users limit their use to the legal password recovery.
#6. Password Cracker
Password Cracker is a desktop password cracking utility that allows you to view hidden passwords in Windows applications. Since the password encryption for MS Office is not supported, Password Cracker doesn’t have the support for password recovery for MS Office password-protected documents.
Most operating systems hide passwords using round dots or asterisks for security, so it would be difficult to recover passwords, especially for those who rely on autosave features. The case is different if you use Password Cracker. You just need to paste the password in its GUI and then you can see the real password by hovering over the Test field.
#7. THC Hydra
THC Hydra is a free online password cracking tool, which supports over 50 protocols. It’s worth noting that it can run checks on different protocols simultaneously. Thanks to the multi-threaded combination testing, it becomes one of the fastest password crackers.
The supported protocols of THC Hydra include Asterisk, AFP, Cisco AAA, Cisco auth, Cisco enable, CVS, Firebird, FTP, HTTP-FORM-GET, HTTP-FORM-POST, HTTP-GET, HTTP-HEAD, HTTP-PROXY, HTTPS-FORM-GET, HTTPS-FORM-POST, HTTPS-GET, HTTPS-HEAD, HTTP-Proxy, ICQ, IMAP, IRC, LDAP, MS-SQL, MYSQL, NCP, NNTP, Oracle Listener, Oracle SID, Oracle, PC-Anywhere, PCNFS, POP3, POSTGRES, RDP, Rexec, Rlogin, Rsh, SAP/R3, SIP, SMB, SMTP, SMTP Enum, SNMP, SOCKS5, SSH (v1 and v2), Subversion, Teamspeak (TS2), Telnet, VMware-Auth, VNC, and XMPP.
This password finder cracks passwords using techniques like brute force, dictionary attacks, and wordlists. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. It also has mobile system support for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. It is also legal and secure.
#8. Aircrack-ng
Aircrack-ng is a password cracker used for cracking WEP or WPA/WPA2 PSK passwords. If you are looking for a Wi-Fi password cracker, it is a good choice. In addition to performing password cracking operations, it also improves Wi-Fi security.
Aircracker-ng makes use of dictionary attack with multiple supported algorithms like PTW and FMS to crack passwords. It is mainly available for Linux, but it can be installed on Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, and eComstation 2 operating systems.
To recover passwords, you can use the above password guessers. If you want to recover deleted/missing data, apply MiniTool Partition Wizard. Its Data Recovery feature allows you to recover the lost data effectively.