Warez.com: Cute FTP tutorialTitle: Unix Password Cracking 
Author: USA (Ultimate Sanity in Anarchy) 
Author Contact: usa@warez.com 
Date: May 20th, 1999 
(c) 1999 Warez.com Inc. 
This tutorial may be freely distrubuted when left as is. There may be no 
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Password Cracking 
  Most people do not understand what password cracking is. First of all it is 
  almost impossible to crack some passwords. Most servers root account are 8 
  letters, numbers, etc. That makes it almost impossible for it to be cracked by 
  a fast home pc. Some people even use high ascii charters in their passwords, 
  such as: æ Æ ô and other charters. Password cracking is a vast field. Most 
  OS's use different methods of security and encryption. I only have used 
  password crackers to crack unix passwords myself.
UNIX Password Cracking
  Unix passwords look something like this 
  root:QxBmPgjh0XPI:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash 
  test:dk8djwIMpsjYdf:100:100:Test Account:/home/test/:/bin/sh 
  This is a flat file format that is very common on any unix system. This is 
  usually called /etc/passwd, but today most people shadow their password files. 
  So when you look at the password file you will see something like 
  root:*:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash 
  test:*:100:100:Test Account:/home/test/:/bin/sh 
  Which means there is a shadow file (usually /etc/shadow or /etc/oshadow) that 
  contains the passwords. The shadow file is usually set so that only a root 
  user can read it. The shadow file would look something like this. 
  root:QxBmPgjh0XPI:0:0:::: 
  test:dk8djwIMpsjYdf:100:100:::: 
  To crack passwords you need a unshadowed password file or the shadow file for 
  a server and a cracking program. I recommend John The Ripper. This is my 
  personal favorite and in my opinion better than all the rest. 
  This is the steps I usually take in cracking a password file. I think this is 
  one of the better ways of doing it. I seem to do pretty good using these 
  steps. 
  1. Run single mode crack. i.e.: john -single passwd 
  2. Try the common password file that comes with john. i.e.: john 
  -w:password.lst passwd 
  3. Get some big dictionary files and crack with those. 
  4. Now I usually crack with my password lists I generated. I have one that is 
  all 1, 2, and 3 letter combinations, 4 length only letters, 5 length only 
  letters, and 4,5, and 6 length numbers. 
  5. If I still do not have the access I need I set john.ini to minimum of 4 
  charters on incremental mode and run john -i passwd 
  The last step will crack all the passwords, but it is a matter of time. With 
  the fastest home PC's it could take your whole life to crack an eight letter 
  password. That is why I like to try dictionary files, and other methods to try 
  to get what I can before running incremental mode. On a huge password file I 
  managed to crack out about 1/3 of the passwords. Usually in cracking, you 
  either only want the root account or just one account with enough access to do 
  what you want (shell account.) 
  Tools 
  John The Ripper - Unix, Win32 & Dos based password cracker. 
  Dictionary Maker 1.0 - This is the tool I use to make my dictionary files. 
  Dictionary Files FTP -  This is a FTP with a lot of dict files.