Rule stacking

[ee10]

When stacking rules, do I need to include a : in each file to ensure that the wordlist is attempted unmodified or is including the : in one file enough?

[royce]

There's only one way to find out

Code:

$ cat rule1.list
u

$ cat rule2.list
d

$ cat rule1-colon.list
:
u

$ cat rule2-colon.list
:
d

$ cat list.txt
password
123456

$ cat list.txt | hashcat --stdout -r rule1.list -r rule2.list
PASSWORDPASSWORD
123456123456

$ cat list.txt | hashcat --stdout -r rule1-colon.list -r rule2.list
passwordpassword
123456123456
PASSWORDPASSWORD
123456123456

$ cat list.txt | hashcat --stdout -r rule1.list -r rule2-colon.list
PASSWORD
123456
PASSWORDPASSWORD
123456123456

$ cat list.txt | hashcat --stdout -r rule1-colon.list -r rule2-colon.list
password
PASSWORD
123456
123456
passwordpassword
PASSWORDPASSWORD
123456123456
123456123456

Rules files are applied one at a time, serially, until a final candidate is created. But also notice that some rules have no effect on some strings.

Each rule file must contain a colon if you want to guarantee that all entirely unmodified strings will appear at least once in the candidate list.