CypherCon 2025

Hashcat Password Cracking Methodologies

Dustin Heywood / EvilMog

Abstract:

In this presentation evilmog will talk about the basic theory of password cracking, various methodologies for fast hashes including bruteforce, masks, stemming/chunking, raking, prince processor, purple rain, fingerprint, cutb, fingercut, and hybrid. There will be demo’s after every step, including if time permits reversion of NTLMv1 to NTLM using DES mode 14000. This talk will also introduce a new fingerprint (expander) / takeout (cutb) combination known as fingercut. This talk will do a deep dive into raking, and other techniques used for MD4/MD5/SHA1/NTLM hash cracking that are highly effective with a single GPU.

Importance: This talk outlines the theory of password cracking which has been lost over the ages, for years these techniques were considered standard, however writeups on them have been lost and videos of the techniques shared with the public would do well to bring these techniques to the forefront. In particular the takeout / cutb attack is only available on internet archive which is a shame as its highly effective.

Dustin Heywood / EvilMog

EvilMog or EvilPog.. you decide

Dustin Heywood otherwise known as “EvilMog” is an Executive Managing Hacker and Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM X-Force. He is a semi-retired member of Team Hashcat, Bishop of the Church of Wifi, and Red Badge Holder to CypherCON. He collects lifetime entry badges to other conferences, is a multi-time Hacker Jeopardy World Champion, Special Effects Pyrotechnician and most importantly an authentication security researcher with a specialty in password cracking. He has over two decades of IT Experience and 15 years of cyber-security experience.