hashcat Forum

Hi everyone

first of all thanks to:
- whomever developed this tool
- the admin, for solving my registration issue

I am not an expert in command-line usage of programs, so I would like to know if I am using hashcat correctly.

what I know about my hashes:
- md5
- I know the first 2 characters of the original string (e.g.: ab)
- I know the charset of the 3rd (uppercases and 0)
- I know the charset of the following characters (lowercases and 1)
- I don't know the lengths, but I expect them to be at least 4 characters and no more than 10

what I would like as an output:
an ASCII file with the hashes next to the original string

This is the command line I was able to set up, may I ask if you spot any major mistakes, given the information above?


Have I forgot something to improve performance/avoid infinite loops?

Thank you

Hi Fred,

I think the order is wrong (the usage is: oclHashcat [options]... hash|hashfile|hccapfile [dictionary|mask|directory]...)

I would have personally proceed this way:

oclHashcat64.exe --status -i --increment-min=4 --increment-max=10 -o $fullpath$\hashes_found.txt -1 ?u0 -2 ?l1 $fullpath$\hashes_tofind.txt ab?1?2?2?2?2?2?2?2

In addition, when you set the -1 and -2 options: uppers = ?u and not $u (it is the same for lowers).

EDIT: check the mask attack wiki topic https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=mask_attack

Hi hypn0s,

thank you very much.
Indeed, I messed up with the symbols for the charset options.

As for the order, I probably got confused by the [mask] at the end of the usage instructions, thanks for pointing it out.

Unfortunately, running that command gives me this error message:

ab?1?2?2?2?2?2?2?2: No such file or directory

What could I be doing wrong? The executable is in the same folder as the cmd file. Paths and filenames have no spaces in them.

Yes, sorry, missed that. You need to specify the attack mode (-a) and the input format (-m):

oclHashcat64.exe -a 3 -m 0 --status -i --increment-min=4 --increment-max=10 -o $fullpath$\hashes_found.txt -1 ?u0 -2 ?l1 $fullpath$\hashes_tofind.txt ab?1?2?2?2?2?2?2?2

By default, the attack mode is set to 0 (straight mode) which doesn't use any mask so only files as arguments are expected.

worked like a charm, thanks for the help and the explanations!