Limitations of hashcat approach for certain targets
#1
This is more of a general question around hashcat/JTR style approaches to cracking.


I understand and it's clear how hashcat approaches brute force mask attacks for a multitude of hash types.

However, I understand, in all applied circumstances, one needs a target hash to work towards.
Whether that's from an encrypted word-doc or indeed a bitcoin wallet.dat.

I'm wondering about the limitations of this, is it always possible to obtain such a target hash?
For example I noticed a user trying to attack Scrypt, I can't see how all implementations of symmetric cryptography that use Scrypt for KDF would also "leak" a hash.


As an example, taking a small tool I wrote using libsodium that users ChaCha20-poly1305 to encrypt data with a symmetric key.
 
A user chosen password is passed through Argon2, thus a key is derived using the Argon2 KDF (a slow HBKDF like Scrypt).

After encryption is complete only the payload of the blob stored on disk looks like this:

[saltForArgon2+nonceAndEncryptedCipherText]

In an example like this, how would one begin to extract a target hash for hashcat? I don't see it as possible.

So, in the case of bitcoin and scrypt support, is the ability to get a target hash from the data implementation specific? or for these examples, does hashcat actually derive a key and try to decrypt AES and check for an output template or something?

Thanks
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Messages In This Thread
Limitations of hashcat approach for certain targets - by john_alan - 02-26-2021, 12:41 AM