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Thread: can hashed password lengths (keyspace?) be determined ahead?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    2013-Dec
    Posts
    11

    can hashed password lengths (keyspace?) be determined ahead?

    Hi all,

    I asked this question over on the hashcat forum and I probably have my reliable "no" answer, but it never hurt to get the benefit of others' experiences.

    I have been using cracking tools and kali a little while now casually, and I am familiar with tools like hashcat, jtr and pyrit.
    I've also started using Kali's crunch, wifite, fern, etc.

    So this is general question applicable to all the collective attack tools.

    I am testing cracking on a wpa2 wireless network hash, and one thing that would be extremely useful in a brute-force attack is if any of these tools could discern the actual, specific length of the target password- i.e, "10 characters", "25 characters", etc., so one could know and plan the attack accordingly.
    In other words, if one knew that the length was exactly 12 characters, they would know ahead that they would be brute-force guessing a max possible 95^12 (or 5.4 x10^23) guesses.
    Then they might try different things to be successful: speed the attempts up, pare down the guesses, find multi-cpu more conducive machines, and so forth.

    Is that possible with any of the tools?
    It's one thing to have to make a discreet 95^12 or 95^25 guesses, but another to have to perform them all from scratch in a range, like 95^12 +95^11+....95^25, adding up their individual times.

    Thanks ahead!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    2013-Jul
    Location
    United States
    Posts
    520
    A hash function will always give you the same amount of bits. A key of 8 characters or a key of 63 characters will ALWAYS result in the same number of bits (same hash length) to prevent exactly what you were wondering.

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