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Encyclopedia > Crack (software)
  Crack
Maintainer: Alec Muffett
Latest release: 5.0a / June, 2000
OS: Unix
Use: password cracking
Website: www.crypticide.com

Crack is a Unix password cracking program designed to allow system administrators to locate users who may have weak passwords vulnerable to a dictionary attack. Software maintenance is one of the activities in software engineering, and is the process of enhancing and optimizing deployed software (software release), as well as remedying defects. ... A software release is to create a new version of the system or program and release it to the user community. ... An operating system (OS) is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system, typically, by repeatedly verifying guesses for the password. ... This page as shown in the aol 9. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system, typically, by repeatedly verifying guesses for the password. ... The term system administrator, abbreviated sysadmin, designates an employment position of those people responsible for running technically advanced information systems or some aspect of them. ... A password is a form of secret authentication data that is used to control access to a resource. ... In cryptanalysis, a dictionary attack refers to discovering a password by running through a list of likely possibilities, often a list of words from a dictionary. ...


Crack began in 1990 when Alec Muffett, a Unix system administrator at the University of Wales Aberystwyth was trying to improve Dan Farmer's 'pwc' cracker in COPS and found that by re-engineering its memory management he got a noticeable performance increase. This led to a total rewrite which became "Crack v2.0" and further development to improve usability. This article is about the year. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... The term system administrator, abbreviated sysadmin, designates an employment position of those people responsible for running technically advanced information systems or some aspect of them. ... The University of Wales (Prifysgol Cymru in Welsh) is a federal university founded in 1893. ... University of Wales, Aberystwyth   The University of Wales, Aberystwyth, a Member Institution of the federal University of Wales, was one of the first university institutions to be established in Wales. ... Dan Farmer is a computer security researcher. ...

Contents


Public Releases

The first public release of Crack was version 2.7a, which was posted to the Usenet newsgroups alt.sources and alt.security on 15 July 1991. Crack v3.2a+fcrypt, posted to comp.sources.misc on 23 August 1991, introduced an optimised version of the Unix crypt() function but was still only really a faster version of what was already available in other packages. Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ... July 15 is the 196th day (197th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 169 days remaining. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This is the song that never ends yes it gos on and on my friends some people started singing it not knowing what it was they just started singing it forever just becauseThis is the song that never ends yes it gos on and on my friends some... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...


The release of Crack v4.0a on 3 November 1991, however, introduced several new features that made it a formidable tool in the system administrators arsenal. November 3 is the 307th day of the year (308th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 58 days remaining. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The term system administrator, abbreviated sysadmin, designates an employment position of those people responsible for running technically advanced information systems or some aspect of them. ...

  • Programmable dictionary generator
  • Network distributed password cracking

Crack v5.0a released in 2000 did not introduce any new features, but instead concentrated on improving the code and introducing more flexibility, such as the ability to integrate other crypt() variants such as those needed to attack the MD5 password hashes used on more modern Unix and Linux systems. It also bundled Crack v6 - a minimalist password cracker and Crack v7 - a brute force password cracker. This article is about the year 2000. ... In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely-used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Linux (also known as GNU/Linux) is a computer operating system. ...


Programmable Dictionary Generator

Whilst traditional password cracking tools simply fed a pre-existing dictionary of words through the crypt() function Crack v4.0a introduced the ability to apply rules to this word list to generate modified versions of these word lists. Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system, typically, by repeatedly verifying guesses for the password. ...


These could range from the simple (do not change) to the extremely complex - the documentation gives this as an example:

X<8l/i/olsi1so0$=
Reject the word unless it is less that 8 characters long, lowercase the word, reject it if it does not contain both the letter 'i' and the letter 'o', substitute all i's for 1's, substitute all o's for 0's, and append an = sign.

These rules could also process the GECOS field in the password file, allowing the program to use the stored names of the users in addition to the existing word lists. The gecos field (also written as GECOS field) is an entry in the /etc/passwd file on UNIX operating systems that contains general information about the user. ...


Network Distributed Password Cracking

As password cracking is inherently embarrassingly parallel Crack v4.0a introduced the ability to use a network of heterogeneous workstations connected by a shared filesystem as parts of a distributed password cracking effort. In the jargon of parallel computing, an embarrassingly parallel workload (or embarrassingly parallel problem) is one for which no particular effort is needed to segment the problem into a very large number of parallel tasks, and there is no essential dependency (or communication) between those parallel tasks. ... Look up Heterogeneous in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system, typically, by repeatedly verifying guesses for the password. ...


All that was required for this was to provide Crack with a configuration file containing the machine names, processing power rates and flags required to build Crack on those machines and call it with the -network option.


See also

Computer security is a field of computer science concerned with the control of risks related to computer use. ... Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system, typically, by repeatedly verifying guesses for the password. ...

References

  • Murphy’s Law and Computer Security - W Venema - Proceedings of the 6th USENIX Unix Security Symposium, 1996

External links

  • Alec Muffett, author of Crack
  • Crack v5.0a FAQ
  • Crypticide I: Thirteen Years of Crack
  • Posting of Crack 2.7a to alt.sources, alt.security
  • Posting of Crack v3.2a to comp.sources.misc
  • Posting of Crack v4.0a to comp.sources.misc, alt.security
  • Debian Package Information for Crack
  • Debian Package Information for Crack for MD5 Password Hashes

  Results from FactBites:
 
Software cracking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1027 words)
Distribution of cracked software ("warez"), or patches to circumvent software protection on software (commonly known as "cracks") is generally an illegal (or more recently, criminal) act of copyright infringement.
Similar cracks are available for software that requires a hardware dongle.
Although these cracks are used by legal buyers of software they can also be used by people who have downloaded or otherwise obtained pirated software (often through P2P networks).
  More results at FactBites »


 

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