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Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2006 06:34:08 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: john-users@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: new at this cracker business
Jay,
Have you been able to crack some of your passwords after the explanation
in my last response?
On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 01:26:36AM +0000, jay rubin wrote:
> Solar Designer- Thank you, you've been a big help and I am beginning to
> get a better undestanding of how to crack a password. There is still a lot
> I have to learn such as salt,
Windows systems don't use salts. Unix systems do.
> and hash rules. Hash rules looks like some kind of password format.
I have no idea what you're referring to with "hash rules".
> I also ran john -test and don't understnad the benchmark output ...
Feel free to post it in a separate message for me to comment. If you
do, please post it anew, not by hitting "reply" to some other message,
as this affects threading in web-based archives of the mailing list.
> I've been keeping track of what I done
> and am going to repeat everything here up to my current execution of john.
>
> Jay's adventures as he tries to crack his Windows XP passwords.
Thanks. This may help make the documentation easier to understand.
> 1. Downloaded John the Ripper 1.7.0.1 (Win32 - binaries, ZIP, 1360 KB)
OK.
> 2. Found that I needed the SAM database file.
What made you think so?
If you would proceed to read the EXAMPLES, you would notice this:
| Similarly, if you're going to be cracking Windows passwords, use any of
| the many utilities that dump Windows password hashes (LM and/or NTLM) in
| Jeremy Allison's PWDUMP output format. Some of these utilities may be
| obtained here:
|
| http://www.openwall.com/passwords/nt.shtml
So you would have downloaded pwdump2 (the first such utility listed on
that page) and used it to obtain the password hashes to feed into John.
> 3. Could not copy the SAM file since on being booted the operating
> system accessed it locking the resource.
> 4. Tried a safe boot to see if I could copy it. Didn?t work.
> 5. Tried an MS/DOS boot to see if I could copy it. Didn?t work.
> 6. Found an unlocked copy of the SAM database file in a repair
> subfolder of the windows folder.
Yes, that's one way to do it. But SAM files are not easy to process.
> 7. Ran john (forgot command string) and got an error, no hashes.
Indeed - John does not support SAM files directly.
> 8. According to documentation I discovered that I needed to merge the
> SAM database file with its shadow file.
That's wrong. The documentation does not say that. I'll try to guess
why/how you arrived at this conclusion. There's this FAQ entry:
| Q: Why doesn't John load my password file? It says "No password hashes
| loaded".
| A: Your password file might be shadowed. You need to get both
| /etc/passwd and the shadow file, and combine them into one file for use
| with John. Please refer to EXAMPLES. As the system administrator,
| you're supposed to know the name and location of your shadow file.
That's one out of five possible answers to this question - but it's the
first one listed - because this cause of the problem is very common when
using John to crack Unix passwords (which is its primary purpose).
Perhaps this answer should be re-worded such that it would be apparent
that it applies to Unix password files only (doesn't the mention of
"/etc/passwd" make it obvious, though? OK, perhaps not to Windows users
who have never worked with Unix).
Another answer included on the FAQ is:
| A: Your password file format or hash type(s) might not be supported ...
This is the last answer on the list - but it applied in your case -
because SAM files are not supported.
> 9. Could not find any shadow file.
> 10. Found a system utility vssadmin (volume shadow copy service) in the
> windows/system32 folder which when run stated that I had no shadow files on
> my system.
"Password shadowing" is a concept specific to Unix, where the system
originally did not protect password hashes from being accessed by
regular users, but such protection was later introduced (by moving
users' passwords into a separate "shadow" file with different access
permissions).
This does not apply to Windows systems. The utility which you found is
completely irrelevant.
> 11. Finally decided I had the wrong version of john.
No, the version of John was fine. (Well, unless you would want to crack
the case-sensitive NTLM hashes - but you did not get this far and you
might not need that.)
> 12. Found 1.7 + jumbo patch build for Win32 (1664 KB), by thomas
> springer.
OK, that would also work.
> 13. Documentation said I needed pwdump2 which I then downloaded.
Great!
> 14. Ran pwdump2 against SAM producing SAM.txt file.
You may _think_ that you ran it against the SAM (how?), but in reality
pwdump2 dumps the hashes from the running system, not from a SAM file.
You did not need the SAM file for that.
Calling the resulting file SAM.txt might be misleading, but of course it
shouldn't affect anything.
> 15. Ran john against SAM.txt file using command string of john ?show
> ?format=NT SAM.txt and got a message, 0 password hashes cracked, 7 left.
That's because you didn't have anything cracked yet. The "--show"
option is, as the name suggests, for displaying previously cracked
usernames and passwords. The documentation says this, too.
> 16. Send an email to john-users@...ts.openwall.com
> 17. Ran john using command string of john SAM.txt, still running.
Great!
> Though I read the README, FAQ and EXAMPLES documentation in my downloads I
> found them, for myself, a little complex.
Understood. This is in part because John runs on so many different
platforms and supports so many different hash types. As a result, some
statements in the documentation have to be very generic and not
specific. Also, John is a tool for systems administrators, so a certain
level of experience is assumed.
> Also with the first offical
> download of john, to execute it I had to use either john-386 or john-mmx.
That's correct - you should be using "john-mmx" unless your computer is
truly ancient. I decided against including a plain "john" in the
Windows and DOS distributions to ensure that people make a conscious
decision on which build they use (MMX or not). Maybe I was wrong as the
feedback I am receiving suggests that people don't understand this stuff
and are picking a John executable at random.
> In the documents it says just use john.
Yes, in most of the documentation it does. However, there's this short
note (should I call it an excuse?) in the README -
| Please note that "binary" (pre-compiled) distributions of John may
| include alternate executables instead of just "john". You may need to
| choose the executable which fits your system best, e.g. "john-mmx" to
| take advantage of MMX acceleration.
> I also on the MARC site under subject of 'does john crack xp passwords
> correctly' I read the following:
>
> john -show pwfile | cut -d: -f2 > cracked
> john -w=cracked -rules -format=nt pwfile
> john -show -format=nt pwfile
This was my answer to someone who wanted to crack the case-sensitive
NTLM hashes after having cracked the case-insensitive LM ones. It does
not apply to your case since you do not have anything cracked and you
might not want/need to be cracking NTLM hashes.
These commands alone are also insufficient to accomplish the task - my
complete answer was longer.
> It did not reconize cut or f2 as options.
Indeed. That's because these commands require Cygwin, as mentioned in
the discussion you've taken them from. But you really don't need this.
> None of these show the final
> command line that I used to execute john as just john SAM.txt.
The README and EXAMPLES files do show this. A quote from README:
| To run John, you need to supply it with some password files and
| optionally specify a cracking mode, like this, using the default order
| of modes and assuming that "passwd" is a copy of your password file:
|
| john passwd
And a quote from EXAMPLES:
| 2. Now, let's assume you've got a password file, "mypasswd", and want to
| crack it. The simplest way is to let John use its default order of
| cracking modes:
|
| john mypasswd
Obviously, the password file name can be arbitrary.
P.S. Please don't quote entire messages in your responses. Only quote
the bits relevant to your response, preferably inline (like I did).
--
Alexander Peslyak <solar at openwall.com>
GPG key ID: B35D3598 fp: 6429 0D7E F130 C13E C929 6447 73C3 A290 B35D 3598
http://www.openwall.com - bringing security into open computing environments
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