Markov attack

[philsmd]

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):

Code:

./hashcat -a 3 --stdout ?d
1
2
3
0
4
7
8
6
5
9

(markov disabled, you need to specify/force that):

Code:

./hashcat -a 3 --stdout --markov-disable ?d
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

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).