hashcat Forum

Hello!

When Hashcat outputs something about $hex, should I be worried? I get it that it doesn't output the characters in the console due to character sets, what about actual matching with passwords or is this only for outputting to console?
I got a lot of Scandinavian characters in a wordlist that contains åäöÅÄÖ, will these still be used for cracking or do I need to use some sort of command? The wordlists are in UTF-8 , I guess it's the correct encoding?
Google is somewhat troublesome when it comes to indexing this forum and I've done a few searches about this here but only found really old threads. Sorry if the question has already been answered.

I'd appreciate some clarification though.


Thank you in advance!

I'm not sure I understand the question. The $HEX[] format is used on console and in the output file. It is ignorant of the encoding used. If you know (or can guess) the encoding used for a $HEX[] plaintext you can convert it into readable format externally.

Your wordlists will always be processed in the same manner, based on ancient hashcat philosophy: crap in - crap out. (unless you use the --encoding-from/--encoding-to options)

Depending on your hashcat version the behaviour changes a bit. In the latest version if the password is a valid UTF8 password, it is displayed as it is. Only in case if the password is not a valid UTF8 character it is displayed as $HEX[...]. For example the 8 bit ISO-8859 encoding would be such a case.