+- hashcat Forum (https://hashcat.net/forum)
+-- Forum: Support (https://hashcat.net/forum/forum-3.html)
+--- Forum: hashcat (https://hashcat.net/forum/forum-45.html)
+--- Thread: Better options (/thread-13446.html)
Better options - d42 - 12-20-2025
Hi,
I've used jtr in the past and I'm trying out hashcat for the first time. I have a laptop with a nvidia geforce rtx 4050 and I've loaded the latest cuda version (opencl 3.0 cuda 13.0.97) for the gpu.
My issue is I have some SQL 2005 hashes that I'm using to test. Some of the hashes were cracked using a dictionary attack. But some of the hashes were not. I've switched over to a brute force attack, but its taking some time to crack the remaining hashes. The passwords usually follow the pattern of alpha-numeric with a capital letter, and a special character.
Is my limitation my hardware or the hashcat command? Should I use a different command or better hardware?
hashcat -m 132 -d 2 -w 3 --username somehashfile.txt --hwmon-temp-abort=80 -a 6 rockyou.txt ?a?a?a?a?a?a?a?a --increment
Any suggestions would be welcomed.
Thanks,
D
RE: Better options - TheBogeyman - 12-25-2025
Switch to pure brute-force mode 3 with a targeted mask for your pattern (alphanumeric + 1 capital + 1 special). Example for 8 chars starting with capital/special patterns:
hashcat -m 132 -a 3 -d 2 -w 3 somehashfile.txt ?u?l?l?l?l?d?d?s --increment-min=6 --increment-max=10
also example define custom sets with -1 ?l?d?u (lowercase+digits+upper) and -2 ?d!@#$% (digits+specials) for efficiency: hashcat -m 132 -a 3 -d 2 -w 3 somehashfile.txt -1 ?l?d?u -2 ?d!@#$%^&* ?1?1?1?1?2?u