Excellent, Long-Established Password Cracker.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We had to undertake a password auditor project recently, so one of the key performance indicators was to use a password cracker to check the veracity of the passwords. The best-known one was 'John the Ripper' so we went ahead and used it. Its main strength lies in detecting password hashes and running against the very best ones (apart from AES). The password crackers can be run from one location for convenience and this also adds to the effectiveness of the application. 'John the Ripper' mainly relies on incorporating brute force attacks and dictionary table attacks on plaintext passwords and this is where t is more effective.
Pros
- Easily finds plantect passwords.
- Simply detects passwords hashes.
- Has a fully bespoke cracker that can be modified to users requirements.
- Excellent for UNIX and Windows usage.
Cons
- It needs to be modified to be able to break SHA 256, 512 and the lastest hashes.
- Can be slow and wildly against the lastest hashes.
- Require admin access to set up account.
- Old and is being superseded by better applications.
Most Important Features
- Easy of use.
- Speed of operation.
- Supports countless Hashes.
- Runs on numerous Operating Systems.
- Is Open source, so free effectively to use.
- Excellent at auto detecting Hashes.
- Continues to develop.
Return on Investment
- Helped us achieve initial Password Auditor goals and targets.
- Simple and cheap to deploy, so have saved greatly compared to paid for products.