hashcat runs on multiple operating systems. Linux and UNIX provide an easy way to connect to a remote workstation over SSH, but doing so used to be awkward on Windows.
Try the built-in OpenSSH first. Windows has shipped an OpenSSH client and server for years, and between that and Windows Terminal a plain ssh session usually runs hashcat fine, keystrokes included. The winpty route below is worth the trouble only when you are stuck in Cygwin or MSYS2 and the interactive keys do not reach hashcat.
Tools such as Bash on Windows and the PowerShell team's OpenSSH implementation address this need, but they can have significant drawbacks, including rendering and TTY communication problems.
Cygwin and MSYS/MSYS2 can also have TTY-related problems. They rely on mintty, which does not provide unbuffered input. As a result, the 's', 'b', 'q', 'p' keystrokes used by hashcat are buffered when pressed and do not function as intended.
To use hashcat through an SSH session on Windows in these environments, one option is winpty.
The following instructions are taken directly from the winpty README and cover both Cygwin and MSYS/MSYS2.
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At a minimum, you should ensure that all commands are executed in a trusted, and preferably isolated, environment.
You need the following to build winpty:
The default g++ compiler for Cygwin targets Cygwin itself, but Cygwin also packages MinGW-w64 compilers. As of this writing, the necessary packages are:
At the time this tutorial was written, winpty over an SSH session using MSYS or MSYS2 had not been tested. It should work similarly to the Cygwin case.
For the original MSYS, use the mingw-get tool (MinGW Installation Manager), and select at least these components:
When running ./configure, make sure that mingw32-g++ is in your PATH. It will be in the C:\MinGW\bin directory.
For MSYS2, use pacman and install at least these packages:
MSYS2 provides three start menu shortcuts for starting MSYS2:
To build winpty, use either the MinGW-w64 Win32 or MinGW-w64 Win64 shortcut, depending on which matches your MSYS2 installation architecture.
These shortcuts add the g++ compiler to your PATH. The 32-bit shortcut uses the mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-gcc package. The 64-bit shortcut uses mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc.
Alternatively, install the mingw-w64-cross-gcc and mingw-w64-cross-crt-git packages instead of mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-gcc or mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc.
These packages install cross-compilers into /opt/bin, and then any of the three shortcuts will work.
In the project directory, run:
$ ./configure $ make $ make install
By default, winpty is installed in /usr/local. Pass PREFIX=<path> to make install to change this location.
To run a Windows console program in mintty or Cygwin/MSYS/MSYS2 sshd, prepend winpty to the command line:
$ winpty hashcat.exe -m 0 ....
This should resolve the input-buffering problems.
Because winpty does not support chroot'ed environments, all file paths (such as output files or wordlists) must be relative to the current directory or absolute within the Windows filesystem (i.e. '/opt/data/wordlists/MyWordlist' must be replaced by 'DRIVELETTER:/INSTALLATION_PATH/opt/data/wordlists/MyWordlist').
Example:
If you connect to the remote Windows workstation “TimmyStation” as “sshd”, with Cygwin/MSYS/MSYS2 installed in C:\INSTALL_PATH and hashcat in C:\INSTALL_PATH\opt\data\hashcat-3.20, a successful command line might look like this:
sshd@TimmyStation /opt/data/hashcat-3.20 $ winpty hashcat.exe -m 0 -o C:/INSTALL_PATH/opt/data/hashcat_outputhashes C:/INSTALL_PATH/opt/data/RawMD5_test.dump -a 0 C:/INSTALL_PATH/opt/data/wordlists/MyWordlist -r rules/best66.rule