Complete newbie here, best version to install on old Windows 10 laptop

[needsunscreen1]

Hello, I am a COMPLETE noob and trying to figure out how to start hashing. I have an old laptop with Windows 10 on it. Which is the best version of Hashcat to install? I have downloaded both hashcat legacy (as I have NO GPU) and the most recent version of Hashcat. I looked at the wiki and also want to be sure I install it correctly. Any direction and help will be greatly appreciated. Any tutorial direction will also be great to have. I also have a Mac desktop that is newer than the laptop, would that be a better option? Thanks.

[needsunscreen1]

I did some more research after asking this question. I installed hashcat on my Mac. I am very new to hashing, any direction of how to start would be welcome. My TextEdit program doesn't save as .txt but as .rtf Would I then sub .rtf when I am learning how to create and crack a hash instead of .txt ?

[Banaanhangwagen]

First of all, with Hashcat one can try to "crack hashes" (not "hashing cracks" or something ;-) ).

As stated on the Hashcat-homepage, simply follow the downloadlink to the latest (or older) versions. If you want the latest beta-build, go here https://hashcat.net/beta/

As stated in the FAQ (https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=sta...n_the_wild), there are some blogs and video's that could be usefull to start with. Check them out! Also, a simple search on YouTube, like "hashcat tutorial" will show you plenty of usefull video's.

You'll need a computer with (preferrably) a GPU and the correct drivers installed in order to play around. If your Mac has a GPU, then yes, it would be better than the laptop without GPU.

Finally, if you decide to work with TextEdit on macOS, you should go to settings and change the format to "plain text" instead of "rich text". (The first result on Google after searching for "TextEdit save txt" would have shown you this)
Pro tip: try to use the command line (terminal) and become a real ninja !

[needsunscreen1]

First of all, with Hashcat one can try to "crack hashes" (not "hashing cracks" or something ;-) ).

As stated on the Hashcat-homepage, simply follow the downloadlink to the latest (or older) versions. If you want the latest beta-build, go here https://hashcat.net/beta/

As stated in the FAQ (https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=sta...n_the_wild), there are some blogs and video's that could be usefull to start with. Check them out! Also, a simple search on YouTube, like "hashcat tutorial" will show you plenty of usefull video's.

You'll need a computer with (preferrably) a GPU and the correct drivers installed in order to play around. If your Mac has a GPU, then yes, it would be better than the laptop without GPU.

Finally, if you decide to work with TextEdit on macOS, you should go to settings and change the format to "plain text" instead of "rich text". (The first result on Google after searching for "TextEdit save txt" would have shown you this)
Pro tip: try to use the command line (terminal) and become a real ninja !

Got it, thank you! Now hopefully I can eventually figure out how to crack hash for a zip file and rar file I don't have passwords to. Why does it sound like it has something to do with drugs? LOL

[needsunscreen1]

I now have the hash file hash.txt created. I have tried to use hashcat to figure out the password inputting: 
hashcat -m 0 -a 0 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt  
I got this as a response:  
/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt: No such file or directory

Is the wordlist rockyou.txt something I have to download and save it somewhere on my computer, and if so, would it be in the same location as the hash.txt file I created? I had downloaded and saved the rockyou.txt wordlist and tried it again with the same response. I am a complete noob, so I am at a very early learning phase so it is possible I may be missing a step. I think if I can learn to put homebrew on my switch, I should be able to figure this out with some direction.

[Snoopy]

first -m0 is md5 and not zip or rar

see https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=example_hashes for the real mode numbers to use

Code:

second  /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt: No such file or directory

tells that hashcat isn't able to find the desired file at this location, check the location and or access rights

[needsunscreen1]

first -m0 is md5 and not zip or rar

see https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=example_hashes for the real mode numbers to use

Code:

second  /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt: No such file or directory

tells that hashcat isn't able to find the desired file at this location, check the location and or access rights

Regarding the first part of the response, I had found a couple sites that have tutorials on beginning to hash and the first example has been md5 on a few sites, so at least it is a starting point if I can get it to work. I figured once I am able to do a few sample hashes to get a feel of what to do, I will find what I need to do to attempt zip and rar so that I can attempt to crack the files I can't access currently.

Regarding the second part of the response, is the wordlist location supposed to be on my computer or on a server? I was trying to google the information and haven't had much luck.

[Snoopy]

Well you can start by generating some example md5 hashes and try cacking them with bruteforce or with a dictionary + rules

https://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/md5.php

on this site you can insert mulitple lines (checkbox) and every line will be hashed and you can use these md5 hashes to play around

wordlists should be on your machine or any other place (usb-drive) accessible from your machine

[needsunscreen1]

Well you can start by generating some example md5 hashes and try cacking them with bruteforce or with a dictionary + rules

https://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/md5.php

on this site you can insert mulitple lines (checkbox) and every line will be hashed and you can use these md5 hashes to play around

wordlists should be on your machine or any other place (usb-drive) accessible from your machine

I am feeling like an idiot, I have put a couple wordlists in my computer, but I still can't get past

/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt: No such file or directory

message. Is there some step I am missing? How is /usr/share  accessed? I originally put the wordlists in my Documents folder, then moved them to my Desktop and still get the same message. I am using this website as a help tool to start:

https://www.networkdatapedia.com/post/a-...sey-mullis

[Snoopy]

Well, on Linux your desktop is "normally" located under /home/"your username"/Desktop and not under /usr/*

Anyway, in your first post you asked about windows, so my first question would be, are you running hashcat in a Microsoft Windows environment or a Linux environment, as these have quite a huge impact on where your Desktop is located.

Second point, for security reasons you should never copy&paste any command line taken from the internet before you can read and understand what will happen when you execute this command

so first get yourself familiar with the command line interface your are using (bash or similar on linux, cmd or powershell on windows) and the programm you want to use (hashcat obviously)

the basic usage of hashcat is

hashcat [options]... hash|hashfile|hccapxfile [dictionary|mask|directory]

for options see wiki https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=hashcat

the website you stated describes very well what happens and what the options mean, but you still have to adapt some options to match your environment, you need to know where the dictionary you want to use is located and how its named, you need to tell hashcat these infos, on linux for example there is a difference between rockyou.txt and RockYou.txt as linux cares about these differences in lower/uppercase. (tabulator autocomplete is your friend)