Popular tools for brute-force attacks

Aircrack-ng

I am sure you already know about Aircrack-ng tool. This is a popular wireless password-cracking tool available for free. I also mentioned this tool in our older post on most popular password cracking tools. This tool comes with WEP/WPA/WPA2-PSK cracker and analysis tools to perform attack on WIFi 802.11. Aircrack NG can be used for any NIC, which supports raw monitoring mode.

It basically performs dictionary attacks against a wireless network to guess the password. As you already know, success of the attack depends on the dictionary of passwords. The better and effective the password dictionary is the more likely it is that it will crack the password.

It is available for Windows and Linux platforms. It has also been ported to run on iOS and Android platforms. You can try on given platforms to see how this tool works.

Download Aircrack-ng from this link: http://www.aircrack-ng.org/

John the Ripper

John the Ripper is another awesome tool that does not need any introduction. It has been a favorite choice for performing brute-force attack for long time. This free password-cracking software was initially developed for Unix systems. Later, developers released it for various other platforms. Now, it supports fifteen different platforms including Unix, Windows, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. You can use this either to identify weak passwords or to crack passwords for breaking authentication.

This tool is very popular and combines various password-cracking features. It can automatically detect the type of hashing used in a password. Therefore, you can also run it against encrypted password storage.

Basically, it can perform brute-force attack with all possible passwords by combining text and numbers. However, you can also use it with a dictionary of passwords to perform dictionary attacks.

Download John the Ripper from this link: http://www.openwall.com/john/

Rainbow Crack

Rainbow Crack is also a popular brute-forcing tool used for password cracking. It generates rainbow tables for using while performing the attack. In this way, it is different from other conventional brute-forcing tools. Rainbow tables are pre-computed. It helps in reducing the time in performing the attack.

The good thing is that there are various organizations, which already published the pre-computer rainbow tables for all Internet users. To save time, you can download those rainbow tables and use in your attacks.

This tool is still in active development. It is available for both Windows and Linux and supports all latest versions of these platforms.

Download Rainbow Crack and read more about this tool from this link: http://project-rainbowcrack.com/

Cain and Abel

I am sure you have already heard the name of this password-cracking tool. It can help in cracking various kind of passwords by performing brute-forcing attacks, dictionary attacks, and cryptanalysis attacks. Cryptanalysis attacks are done by using the rainbow tables as mentioned in the previous tool.

It is worth to mention that some virus scanners detect it as malware. Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials report it as malware and block it in system. If it is in your system, you should first block your antivirus.

Its basic functions:

Sniffing the network

Cracking encrypted passwords using Dictionary

Brute-Force and Cryptanalysis attacks

Recording VoIP conversations

Decoding scrambled passwords

Recovering wireless network keys

Revealing password boxes

Uncovering cached passwords

Analyzing routing protocols.

The latest version of the tool has many features, and has added sniffing to perform Man in the Middle attacks.

Download Cain and Able from this link: http://www.oxid.it/cain.html

L0phtCrack

L0phtCrack is known for its ability to crack Windows passwords. It uses dictionary, brute-force, hybrid attacks, and rainbow tables. The most notable features of l0phtcrack are scheduling, hash extraction from 64 bit Windows versions, multiprocessor algorithms, and networks monitoring and decoding. If you want to crack the password.