Brute-force missing characters from a known word?

[theholydemon]

I had read somewhere during my quest for hashcat knowledge that ?? can be used to escape a question mark. And it works:

Code:

hashcat-cli32.exe -a 3 -m 6900 --pw-min=54 --pw-max=54 ex.hash -1 ?l?d?u http://example.com/asdf.php??key=asdf?1s7f8df?1?1?17

Unfortunately, no hashes were cracked for the url. I thought the problem was at my end, but I tried cracking

Code:

hello?kgoodbye:c71005c28efad7e95b145130dd970d7f9521b2dd9c222fb2dacea5eca962f761

with the escaping and it works. I'll contact the guys who made this challenge once again.

Also, the url I gave is a dummy. The original one is 54 characters long.

Thanks for your help, guys!

Edit: I see that there's no Reputation giving system in this forum. Well, here's two thumbs up for you anyways. ? ?