Ubuntu Manpage: Crack, Reporter - programs to break password files

NAME

       Crack, Reporter - programs to break password files

SYNOPSIS

       Crack [options] [-fmt format] [file ...]
       Crack-Reporter [-quiet] [-html]

DESCRIPTION

       This  manual page documents briefly the Crack, and Crack-Reporter commands.  This manual page was written
       for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.  Instead,
       there is some documentation available at /usr/share/doc/crack which you are encouraged to read

       Crack is not a program designed to break the password of every user in the file.  Rather, it is  designed
       to find weak passwords in the file, by attacking those sorts of bad passwords which are most likely to be
       used,  in the order in which they would most easily be found (ie: are most likely to be used by a moronic
       user).

       Crack is not designed to break user passwords; it is designed to break password files.  This is a  subtle
       but important distinction.

       Crack-Reporter will show what passwords have been cracked, as well as view errors that have been detected
       in  the  source  password  files,  etc.   Guesses  are  listed  chronologically, so users who wish to see
       incremental changes in the output as Crack continues  to  run  over  a  course  of  days  or  weeks,  are
       encouraged to wrap invocations of Crack-Reporter in a script with diff.

OPTIONS

A summary of options are included below. For Crack:

-makedict
Creates and compresses the dictionaries Crack will use

-makeonly
Compiles the binaries for Crack (not necessary for Debian GNU/Linux since they are already
provided)

-debug Lets you see what the Crack script is doing.

-recover
Used when restarting an abnormally-terminated run; suppresses rebuild of the gecos-derived
dictionaries.

-fgnd Runs the password cracker in the foreground, with stdin, stdout and stderr attached to the usual
places.

-fmt format
Specifies the input file format.

-from N
Starts password cracking from rule number "N".

-keep Prevents deletion of the temporary file used to store the password cracker's input.

-mail E-Mail a warning message to anyone whose password is cracked. See the script nastygram.

-network
Runs the password cracker in network mode.

-nice N
Runs the password cracker at a reduced priority, so that other jobs can take priority over the
CPU.

-kill filename

-remote
Internal options used to support networking.

For Crack-Reporter -html Produces output in a fairly basic HTML-readable format. -quiet
Suppresses the reporting of errors in the password file (corrupt entries, etc)

EXAMPLES

       To run Crack

          # Crack -nice 10 /etc/passwd

       If a Crack session is killed accidentally, it can be restarted with moderate efficiency by doing:

           mv run/Dhostname.N run/tempfilename
           Crack -recover -fmt spf run/tempfilename

       However if all you wish to do is start cracking passwords from some specific rule number, or to restart a
       run whilst skipping over a few rulesets, try:

           Crack [-recover] -from N filename ...

       ...where N is the number of the rule to start working from.

FILES

       /usr/share/Crack Location of the Crack program and scripts.  /var/lib/Crack/ Location for  the  temporary
       files used by Crack.

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux
       system (but may be used by others).

       Crack    and    Crack-Reporter    (originally   called   Reporter)   were   written   by   Alec   Muffett
       <Alec.Muffett@UK.Sun.COM>

                                                                                                        CRACK(8)