Hash Crack v4

Password Cracking Manual

Hash Crack v4 is finally here, and it’s the biggest update yet.

The new subtitle says it all: Extract. Detect. Crack. Defend. The first three editions were all about recovering a password. v4 keeps every bit of that and adds the other side of the fight, detecting credential attacks and hardening against them, so the book now works for the blue team as much as the red. Every tool got bumped to its current version, the whole thing was reorganized into clean chapters, and there is a pile of new material.

TL;DR

• Hash Crack v4 is the 4th edition of the password cracking manual.
• New subtitle, Extract.Detect.Crack.Defend., now covers the defender’s side too.
• Three new chapters: Build a Cracking Rig, Credential Harvesting, and Defend & Detect.
• Extract Hashes got a big expansion (WPA3, NTLM coercion & relay, Cloud/Azure/SCCM, IoT, and more).
• RAMP replaces PACK for rules, analysis, masks, and planning.
• Updated cheat sheets and a reworked appendix.
• Available now in print on Amazon.

Extract Hashes (expanded)

Getting the hashes in the first place was the big theme of v3, and it’s even bigger here. The chapter now walks you through:

• Windows domain and local
• Linux and macOS
• Wireless (WPA2/WPA3)
• Network hashes, plus NTLM coercion & relay
• Full-disk encryption and virtual machines
• DevOps, databases, and IoT
• Cloud, Azure & SCCM
• The *2john extractors
• Credential hunting, secrets & API tokens, router and IoT secrets
• A 10 Ways to Domain Admin walk-through

Credential Harvesting (new)

Sometimes you don’t need to crack anything, the plaintext is already sitting there. This new chapter covers living off the land, infostealer credential targets, auth tokens, and locked machines.

Build a Cracking Rig (new chapter)

The rig build used to be tucked in an appendix. Now it’s a full chapter:

• Planning the build
• Scalable 1 to 8 GPU hardware
• Build and install on Ubuntu
• A cloud cracking rig
• Distributed cracking

Attacks

All the core attacks, plus some new angles:

• Dictionary, rules, and masks
• Advanced attacks
• Known-composition attacks
• Language & region targeting

Defend & Detect (new chapter)

This is the “Defend” in the new subtitle. How to harden against hash cracking, detect credential attacks, and set traps with honeytokens and canaries.

RAMP replaces PACK

v4 drops PACK in favor of RAMP (Rules, Analysis, Masks & Planning), and it gets its own cheat sheet. Grab it at github.com/netmux/ramp.

Cheat Sheets & Reference

Updated Hashcat and John the Ripper cheat sheets, the new RAMP cheat sheet, plus common errors & fixes, terminal, and file-manipulation references. The appendix adds a history of password cracking, hash identification by regex, historical and current GPU benchmarks, a full hash type reference (Hashcat modes and JtR), and the Hash Crack Challenge.

Get Hash Crack v4 on Amazon, available now in print.