Viper is a software tool that can crack passwords using brute-force techniques.
Viper is a password cracking software that operates on the brute-force method. I came across this software when I was trying to understand the vulnerability of UNIX passwords. Among other password cracking tools, I found the viper.pl by Hale to be more user-friendly. To enhance its performance and time-estimation ability, I decided to reach out to Hale with my ideas of coding and re-writing the program in 'C' to optimize its speed.
My aim was to determine the time it takes to crack every possible password combination on various computing platforms, with different character sets and lengths. Though before diving into these details, it is crucial to comprehend how passwords are generated and how they operate. Once these details are clarified, writing a password cracker becomes less complicated.
The primary design of a brute-force password cracker is a loop in which password hashes are continuously computed from incremented password strings of generic character sets. The result is then compared to the real password hash until they match. For instance, if the password is made up of only lowercase letters from 'a' through 'z,' we would start by hashing and comparing 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'… up until 'z'. After this, we would move on to 'aa', 'ab', 'ac', 'ad'... up until 'zz', and then to 'aaa', 'aab', 'aac', 'aad'…) up until 'zzz'. This will continue until we find the 'winning combination'.
The code's efficiency is valuable, considering there are millions of password combinations to be checked. If we consider a password with a maximum of eight characters, which is made up of all lowercase letters, we can calculate the total number of potential combinations. For instance, using the 26 lowercase letters of the English alphabet, the total number of combinations would be 217,180,147,158.
After writing the code and analyzing the results, my findings were highly interesting. Using Viper, I was able to examine the time it takes to check for different password lengths, computing platforms, and varying character sets. Overall, Viper is an excellent software tool for password cracking and worth exploring for those interested in information security.
My aim was to determine the time it takes to crack every possible password combination on various computing platforms, with different character sets and lengths. Though before diving into these details, it is crucial to comprehend how passwords are generated and how they operate. Once these details are clarified, writing a password cracker becomes less complicated.
The primary design of a brute-force password cracker is a loop in which password hashes are continuously computed from incremented password strings of generic character sets. The result is then compared to the real password hash until they match. For instance, if the password is made up of only lowercase letters from 'a' through 'z,' we would start by hashing and comparing 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'… up until 'z'. After this, we would move on to 'aa', 'ab', 'ac', 'ad'... up until 'zz', and then to 'aaa', 'aab', 'aac', 'aad'…) up until 'zzz'. This will continue until we find the 'winning combination'.
The code's efficiency is valuable, considering there are millions of password combinations to be checked. If we consider a password with a maximum of eight characters, which is made up of all lowercase letters, we can calculate the total number of potential combinations. For instance, using the 26 lowercase letters of the English alphabet, the total number of combinations would be 217,180,147,158.
After writing the code and analyzing the results, my findings were highly interesting. Using Viper, I was able to examine the time it takes to check for different password lengths, computing platforms, and varying character sets. Overall, Viper is an excellent software tool for password cracking and worth exploring for those interested in information security.
What's New
Version 1.4: N/A