john-users - Re: Advantages of Pro 1.7.3 for salted MD5 on Q6600 x86

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Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:39:34 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: john-users@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Advantages of Pro 1.7.3 for salted MD5 on Q6600 x86_64?

Steve,

On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 04:12:26PM -0600, Steve Bergman wrote:
> This is my first post to this list, so I would like to thank Solar
> Designer and the others who have made john possible. Also, I hope this
> question is appropriate for this list.

You're welcome, and thank you for asking the questions on the list
rather than in private.

> I am currently running john 1.7.2 x86_64 on Ubuntu 8.10. I've looked
> over the Pro page, and the list, but I'm unclear on a couple of points:
> 
> 1. Are there significant performance advantages of 1.7.3 Pro for FreeBSD
> MD5 on a Q6600 running on a 64 bit Linux? (Level of MMX/SSEx support,
> etc.)

No.  So far JtR Pro has been about well-tested native packages, ease of
installation and near-optimal use on a given target platform, official
support for more hash types (currently NTLM and OS X salted SHA-1
hashes), and commercial support.  It has not been about performance
improvements over the free versions, if you're able to build those
optimally for your platforms on your own.

> 2. For an American English location, are the dictionaries on the CD
> superior to the freely downloadable all.gz file I have seen linked here?

No.  The CD contains all the same files that are found on the FTP
mirrors, plus one additional file, which has wordlist mangling rules
pre-applied (so it occupies most space on the CD).  This additional
file is primarily useful with other password recovery software, which
might not include built-in word mangling rules as powerful as JtR's.
It is also useful with JtR when cracking slow hashes and/or when the
number of different salts is large, as it has all duplicate entries
purged.  (Even though input wordlists normally have no duplicate
entries, applying the --rules typically results in some duplicates.)
Rather than purchase the CD (or the download), you have the option to
use the "unique" program as illustrated in doc/EXAMPLES to achieve the
same effect:

	http://www.openwall.com/john/doc/EXAMPLES.shtml

The choice is yours.

You did not ask this, but you could want to know that right now JtR Pro
actually does include a newer (superior) revision of all.lst than one
found on the FTP mirrors or the CD.  This is because I happened to
update all.lst the last time specifically when I was working on JtR Pro,
and I did not have a chance to update the wordlists collection since
then (I intend to make more updates at once).

Alexander

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