It's not a special "kind of attack", instead it is "just" one of many optimisations.
It is on by default in hashcat (to disable it you need to use --markov-disable).
You can see the differences by using these 2 commands:
(markov enabled):
(markov disabled, you need to specify/force that):
To make this very clear: markov doesn't change the overall number of hashes you will crack (it will be always the same amount). Instead, what changes is that with markov the likelihood/probability that you crack a password faster (because of the markov model = probability of each character depending on its position) will increase. General speaking, it's as simple as this (there is no real magic behind it).
It is on by default in hashcat (to disable it you need to use --markov-disable).
You can see the differences by using these 2 commands:
(markov enabled):
Code:
./hashcat -a 3 --stdout ?d
1
2
3
0
4
7
8
6
5
9Code:
./hashcat -a 3 --stdout --markov-disable ?d
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9To make this very clear: markov doesn't change the overall number of hashes you will crack (it will be always the same amount). Instead, what changes is that with markov the likelihood/probability that you crack a password faster (because of the markov model = probability of each character depending on its position) will increase. General speaking, it's as simple as this (there is no real magic behind it).