Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: Etc/shadow file and john


From: Terry Vernon <tvernon24 () comcast net>
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:38:32 -0500

i dont have much other experience with any other cracker besides john since it does what it does so well, however i can say what steps i take to minimize the length of time it takes to crack. Get yourself several good dictionary files. One english language dictionary, one with first names and one with surnames. I haven't used john in a long time but it used to have the options to run dictionary attacks with variations on the words in the dictionary file. I'd get many hits in a short period like this. After that I would then switch to incremental mode and let it run for as long as i had the patience (4 days for me tops). It doesn't matter the format of the file I believe since it reads the contents into memory anyways. Try that. If you had already done this and I wasted your time I'm sorry.

However, since you were able to get the shadow file this means you have root access and would net more passwords by installing a sniffer like ettercap or dsniff. Just an option.

PS. I like your paints, they shine well (i bet you get that alot)

Terry Vernon
CTO
Sprite Technologies

Sherwyn Williams wrote:

I am doing an assesment for passwords on a network, after getting the password file I piped the output to a text file, tried to run that against John and can't get any luck with the program. Do anyone here uses any other password programs, and is there a better format than a text file to store the out of the etc/shadow when trying to get the passes.
Sherwyn Williams
Technical Consultant
Sherwill22 () tmail com



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