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Show HN: I Dedicated 4 Years to Mastering Offline Password Cracking

268 points by bojta-lepenye 5mo ago

Hi everyone, I am Bojta Lepenye, and first of all, I want to thank the core developers of Hashcat. In my experience, it is quite literally the most capable tool available for offline password cracking across a wide range of use cases. I have spent the last 4 years (from age 14 to 18) extensively working with Hashcat and the tools surrounding it, and I have documented what I have learned throughout that time (since January 18, 2022) in my first book. During that period, I also had to continuously update and rewrite major sections as the field evolved. One example was the introduction of GPU support for Argon2 and other memory-hard password hashing algorithms, which significantly changed some cracking workflows. My passion for this book, or its “quick starter,” if you will, came from an ethically conducted penetration test I performed with full authorization at my school. This is something I am both hesitant and quite proud to acknowledge. At the beginning, I simply wrote down everything I had learned from YouTube videos and online blogs. However, not long after starting my project, I realized I practically knew nothing about password security, and that small 10 to 15 pages I had written would never be enough if someone was looking for a professional guide to cracking passwords. The other main driving force behind the book was the fact that while researching online, browsing forums, reading academic papers and white papers, watching videos, exploring blogs, inspecting presentations, and examining infographics, I did not find a single source that comprehensively covers and explains everything one needs to understand about offline password cracking. Literally. Not one. Therefore, I continued my research and learned about password hashing algorithms, the security properties of hash functions, advanced hash cracking techniques, password analysis, attack optimization, and much, much more. From the very beginning, I wanted to share this knowledge with the community because having access to a resource like this would have helped me tremendously when I first started learning password cracking. I sincerely hope this work will be useful to both beginners and experienced professionals alike, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. I have also put together a little video to give you a little sneak peek into it. It is on Google Drive. It is the official domain, and you do not need to download anything. Here it is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13LeysSZO8Mx-LGKt8UQjUGBKOYH7MqiS/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/13LeysSZO8Mx-LGKt8UQjUGBKOYH... If you are interested, the book is now publicly available on Amazon, and can be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX36XRCD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX36XRCD

K0balt 5mo ago
It’s always exciting to me when someone who has been so obviously passionate and obsessed with a technical discipline decides to take the time to write down what they have learned to help others. This is literally the foundation of civilization and what makes me happy to be a post-agricultural human. So, thank you. I have followed a similar path in other technical subjects, and have authored a couple of books on those journeys. I look forward to reading yours. Some people have brought up style and structure issues with your book.. try to take this in stride. Writing for publication is its own whole thing, and involves a lot more than just putting ideas to print. Creating text that conveys the spirit, personality, and information that you want it to is nontrivial, and it takes time and practice to master. It’s easy, as a reader, to feel the rough spots in a literary work… but that does not mean that the reader would do any better when confronted with writing a book level tome, so hear the critique but don’t overthink the critic. Even though writing well was a side quest to my otherwise very technical focus, I found a joy in developing my literary voice… and I would encourage you to keep uncovering yours. Don’t be bullied into writing “correctly”. If you want to ponder the senselessness of life you can read one of millions of “correctly” written papers that will have you wanting to end it all just so you don’t have to go on. In these informative but wasted pages you won’t find a shred of the author, and only find yourself bored by the subject that so enthralled them to spend a thousand hours or more writing about it. What a wasted opportunity. They became so focused on writing correctly that they lost their voice entirely. Their writing may inform, but it will rarely inspire. In these little bits of your writing I have skimmed so far, there’s plenty of warts but I feel you in the work. Your passion is contagious, and I am encouraged to learn. Sure, work out the warts, but don’t be bullied into writing “correctly” by sticking to formality and convention. Writing is about informing, inspiring, and guiding the frame of mind of the reader. Your work does that because your voice shines through. Sure, it could be easier to read, sometimes clearer, and you should work on that if you want to, but don’t sacrifice your voice in the process. The best written work has a definite personal opinion on how to write a voice, and it’s usually not the “correct” way. Humans writing like humans is what makes writing worthwhile in the third industrial age. Frolic in your humanity and keep up the good work. Don’t let the well intentioned bastards keep you down, especially if they have a point.
- 5mo ago

268 points by bojta-lepenye 5mo ago

K0balt 5mo ago

It’s always exciting to me when someone who has been so obviously passionate and obsessed with a technical discipline decides to take the time to write down what they have learned to help others. This is literally the foundation of civilization and what makes me happy to be a post-agricultural human. So, thank you. I have followed a similar path in other technical subjects, and have authored a couple of books on those journeys. I look forward to reading yours. Some people have brought up style and structure issues with your book.. try to take this in stride. Writing for publication is its own whole thing, and involves a lot more than just putting ideas to print. Creating text that conveys the spirit, personality, and information that you want it to is nontrivial, and it takes time and practice to master. It’s easy, as a reader, to feel the rough spots in a literary work… but that does not mean that the reader would do any better when confronted with writing a book level tome, so hear the critique but don’t overthink the critic. Even though writing well was a side quest to my otherwise very technical focus, I found a joy in developing my literary voice… and I would encourage you to keep uncovering yours. Don’t be bullied into writing “correctly”. If you want to ponder the senselessness of life you can read one of millions of “correctly” written papers that will have you wanting to end it all just so you don’t have to go on. In these informative but wasted pages you won’t find a shred of the author, and only find yourself bored by the subject that so enthralled them to spend a thousand hours or more writing about it. What a wasted opportunity. They became so focused on writing correctly that they lost their voice entirely. Their writing may inform, but it will rarely inspire. In these little bits of your writing I have skimmed so far, there’s plenty of warts but I feel you in the work. Your passion is contagious, and I am encouraged to learn. Sure, work out the warts, but don’t be bullied into writing “correctly” by sticking to formality and convention. Writing is about informing, inspiring, and guiding the frame of mind of the reader. Your work does that because your voice shines through. Sure, it could be easier to read, sometimes clearer, and you should work on that if you want to, but don’t sacrifice your voice in the process. The best written work has a definite personal opinion on how to write a voice, and it’s usually not the “correct” way. Humans writing like humans is what makes writing worthwhile in the third industrial age. Frolic in your humanity and keep up the good work. Don’t let the well intentioned bastards keep you down, especially if they have a point.

5mo ago