Essential Explanation of Cracking Principles for Beginners - Various Commonly Used Password Cracking Methods

The speed of cracking depends on two factors: the speed of the computer, which is the decisive factor, and the encryption format of the file. Taking compressed files as an example, ZIP formats are relatively faster than 7Z formats and slower. Outsourced cracking uses the same software, but the computers used are different. Clustered multi-opening cracking or mainframe computer speeds are incomparable to those of personal computers. Even so, sometimes a complex encrypted file still takes one or two days to crack. Therefore, cracking is a skill; don't assume that simply downloading software and brute-forcing it into your computer will guarantee success. To crack a complex password, you need to learn some techniques. Next, we will explain the principle of hacking:

1. What is brute force hacking? (Brute-force)

Brute-force cracking, also known as Brute-force cracking, is a method of deciphering passwords that involves calculating them one by one until the true password is found. For example, a password known to be four digits and composed entirely of numbers may have 10,000 combinations, so it takes a maximum of 10,000 attempts to find the correct password. Theoretically, this method can be used to crack any type of password; the only question is how to shorten the trial and error time. Some people use computers to increase efficiency.

In fact, even a brute-force cracking method is useless against some complex passwords. Although computers are very fast, they are not fast enough to process hundreds of millions of test operations in a limited amount of time. Why do I say that? For example, let's say a password has only 8 characters, each possibly 26 letters (52 letters, case-sensitive). Add 10 numbers, plus some special characters (such as @#$%^, etc., let's say only 10, but it's actually more than that). That means the possibilities for each digit are 52 + 10 + 10 = 72. If you iterate through 8 characters, it's 72 to the power of 8, which is approximately 600 trillion! Unless cracked using a large cluster computer. However, cracking a password using a personal PC usually requires a very long time, especially for complex passwords. Of course, sometimes if you're lucky, you might get it right in just a few minutes.

2. What is dictionary cracking? (Dictionary)

First, let's explain the Dictionary file. A Dictionary file is a text file that hackers believe commonly used passwords by network users, as well as passwords obtained through various means in the past, are collected together. The cracker program will automatically test them one by one. In other words, only if the cracked user's password exists in the Dictionary file will it be found by this method. Don't underestimate this seemingly waiting-for-a-rabbit method. Because different hackers often exchange Dictionary files online, a Dictionary file circulating online usually contains a lot of accumulated hacking experience. For users with low security awareness, the cracking rate is very high.

3. What is Xieve hack?

is a type of brute-force cracking. Cracking only checks common character combinations in English words. It can skip meaningless character combinations to improve the speed of brute-force cracking.

4. Known Password/Part Cracking

It cracks by checking certain passwords entered in the "value" field, and can check whether certain passwords are correct without opening the file. This cracking can be combined with other cracks using the merge cracking option, for example: if you know that one Word of your Password is "1980", you can set the "value" to "1980". Using merge cracking for joint dictionary cracking and known Password/partial cracking

5. Previous Passwords

Previous Password cracking, which recovers Passwords by checking other cracks previously used for other files, automatically saves all found Passwords

6.   The role of the crack mediator

The crack mediator has two sub-functions: Change Casing and Reverse Password. For example, when selecting the change letter of the crack regulator, select an Xieve crack. Then all passwords in Xieve will be modified to uppercase, lowercase, rotate, mix, etc.

7.   Join Attacks

  Join Attacks involve breaking the password into segments. For example, if the password is 8 bits long, the first four bits are known, 1234 the last four bits are unknown, then select Join Attacks and set the total number of passwords to 8 bits. After adding a known password/partially cracked "Value" selection 1234 Password length selection from 1 to 4; Another unknown part of the selection brute force, with length selections ranging from 5 to 8