Easy for you, hard for me - mask writing
#1
Hi, sorry it's my first attempt and i'm finding documentation confusing and searched forums to no avail. I think this is a very simple question.

I am trying to crack a WPA hash where I know most of the password. It is either 8 or 9 characters long, so it goes like this: ?crossa7?

So I only don't know the first character and the last character. It might be that 7 is the last character. How do I write the mask rules for this? Thanks so much!
#2
Also ideally, I would like to limit the first character to all upper and lower case letters, instead of only upper case letters or only lower case letters.
#3
Actually it does not matter because the keyspace is so small. Just use the followings:

-a 3 whatever.hccap ?acrossa7
-a 3 whatever.hccap ?acrossa7?a
-a 3 whatever.hccap crossa7?a
-a 3 whatever.hccap crossa7?a?a
#4
OK, thank you very much. You are suggesting, I guess, that I try these each one at a time, because there are so few possibilities it won't take long, right? So let's say for example it wasn't such a simple problem.

How is it possible to instruct one place to guess all uppercase and lowercase letters?

Also, how to instruct to first guess 7 letter passwords, then 8 letter passwords, etc.? I see the password min and maximum flag there in the help file, however I am not sure how to use it. Thanks again.
#5
I have run the program with the rules recommended...I am not quite sure how to read the results, if they are successful or not. I don't see any error messages. However when I command --show, I get the message:

ERROR: cannot open pot file 'hashcat.pot' (2) : No such file or directory
#6
(06-15-2015, 05:21 AM)jacknimble Wrote: I have run the program with the rules recommended...I am not quite sure how to read the results, if they are successful or not. I don't see any error messages. However when I command --show, I get the message:

ERROR: cannot open pot file 'hashcat.pot' (2) : No such file or directory

I'm very sorry, maybe this question is so simple and obvious is the reason why there is nothing in FAQ or any of the tutorials. I realize most of you are too expert to waste your time on this, but it's very frustrating. I've been working on this password for days, finally got it to this point, and to me at least the results or where to find the results of my hashcat attack are not easy to see at all. I do appreciate your time, thanks.

In case it isn't clear, my question is: How do I know if it worked? and Where are the results?
#7
(06-15-2015, 05:12 AM)jacknimble Wrote: How is it possible to instruct one place to guess all uppercase and lowercase letters? Also, how to instruct to first guess 7 letter passwords, then 8 letter passwords, etc.? I see the password min and maximum flag there in the help file, however I am not sure how to use it. Thanks again.
I strongly suggest that you read the wiki at hashcat.net/wiki. Every answers to your questions are there.

1) You can use -1 ?u?l and use the mask ?1crossa7?a which will look for every upper and lower case on the first position.

2) -i with --increment-min=7 or just create 2 masks: 1 of length 7 and 1 of length 8.
#8
(06-15-2015, 06:12 AM)jacknimble Wrote: I'm very sorry, maybe this question is so simple and obvious is the reason why there is nothing in FAQ or any of the tutorials. I realize most of you are too expert to waste your time on this, but it's very frustrating. I've been working on this password for days, finally got it to this point, and to me at least the results or where to find the results of my hashcat attack are not easy to see at all. I do appreciate your time, thanks.

In case it isn't clear, my question is: How do I know if it worked? and Where are the results?
Again, in the wiki...
You can use -o found.txt and your passwords (if found) will be in there. By default, it will also be in oclhashcat.pot. I guess the file is created only when 1 password is cracked so you might get your error with --show because there was no cracked passwords.
#9
I assumed that you were using oclhashcat by the way. If you are using Hashcat, it might be slightly different.