12 Best Password Cracker Tools in Cyber Security

Summary: Explore the world of password cracking with our comprehensive guide to the best Password Cracker Tools. Get into the intricacies of various password crackers or Wi-Fi hacking tools that play a crucial role in securing digital environments.

A password cracker tool is a software program designed to recover or guess passwords used to access computer systems, networks, or encrypted data. The primary purpose of such tools is to gain unauthorized access to protected resources.

Password cracker tools use various techniques such as brute-force attacks, dictionary attacks, and rainbow table attacks to crack passwords.

The use of password cracker tools can be both legitimate and malicious. In legitimate scenarios, these tools can be used by security professionals to assess the strength of passwords and identify vulnerabilities in systems. This helps organizations enhance their security measures and protect against potential threats.

Security practitioners, system administrators, cybersecurity companies, and law enforcement agencies are among the legitimate users of password cracker tools. However, password cracker tools are also used by hackers and malicious individuals engaging in illicit activities.

These individuals exploit weak passwords to gain unauthorized access to personal, corporate, or financial information. They use cracked passwords to make cyberattacks, steal data, commit fraud, etc.

What is Password Cracking?

In simple terms, password cracking refers to the process of attempting to discover or uncover someone’s password without their permission. It involves using specialized tools or techniques to try various combinations of characters, words, or phrases until the correct password is found.

This activity is typically used to gain unauthorized access to a system or personal account. Online password remover (wifi password cracker software) can exploit weak passwords, vulnerabilities, or security flaws to gain entry to protected accounts.

It is considered a malicious activity and is often illegal unless performed by authorized individuals for legitimate security purposes.

12 Best Password Cracker Tools in Cyber Security

• Medusa
• Hashcat
• John The Ripper
• Password Cracker
• AirCrack
• Cain and Abel
• CrackStation
• RainbowCrack
• ophCrack
• THC Hydra
• WFuzz
• Brutus Password Cracker

Here’re are a few examples of Wi-Fi password Cracker Tools.

• Medusa

Best For: Cracking passwords for free via brute force parallel testing.

Medusa is a wifi password unlocker that shares similarities with THC Hydra. This tool, which operates through the command-line interface, has the capability to test up to 2000 passwords in just one minute.

It offers users the ability to conduct concurrent processing through threads in order to crack passwords. Furthermore, this software can be utilized to retrieve passwords for multiple accounts.

Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux, and macOS

Features of Medusa

• Parallel thread-based processing for brute-force testing.
• Designed with modularity in mind.
• Allows for flexibility in case of user input such as password/user/host.
• Supports various protocols like MB, HTTP, POP3, SSHv2, and MS-SQL.

Pros and Cons of Medusa

Pricing: Medusa is a free password cracker.

• Hashcat

Best For: Cracking several hashes simultaneously. Known as the world’s fastest password cracker!

Hashcat, an open-source and free tool, presents itself as the swiftest wifi cracker app worldwide. It provides a variety of methods, ranging from basic brute force to hybrid masks, allowing you to crack multiple hashes concurrently.

With Hashcat, users can decode various types of hashes, including SHA3-512, MD5, PBKDF2, ChaCha20, KeePass, 1Password, Kerberos 5, LastPass, and others.

Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Features of Hashcat

• Supports more than 300 hash types.
• Utilizes both GPU and CPU at the same time to crack passwords easily.

Pros and Cons of Hashcat

Pricing: Hashcat is a free Wi-Fi password cracker.

• John The Ripper

Best For: Identifying weak or vulnerable passwords on macOS and Unix OS for free.

John the Ripper is a no-cost application that enables both local as well as remote password retrieval. Security professionals can employ this software to evaluate the strength of any password. It leverages Dictionary attack and Brute Force attack functionality to identify passwords.

Supported Platforms: Supports Windows, Linux, macOS, OpenVMS, and BeOS.

Features of John the Ripper

• Password cracking via Dictionary and Brute Force attack techniques.
• Supports AVX2, MIC, ASIMD, AVX-51, SHA, and MD54 protocols

Pros and Cons of John the Ripper

Pricing: John the Ripper is a free Wi-Fi password cracker software.

• Password Cracker

Best For: Retrieving hidden passwords for free within Windows applications.

Password Cracker, being a desktop application for Windows OS, enables the viewing of concealed passwords. When you create an account, certain applications conceal passwords using asterisks to ensure security.

With this tool, there is no need to manually write down passwords on paper. Once activated, simply hover the mouse over the password to reveal it.

Supported Platforms: Windows

Features of Password Cracker

• Enables viewing of hidden passwords simply by mouse hover.
• Multi-language support

Pros and Cons of Password Cracker

Pricing: It is a free Gmail password cracker.

• AirCrack

Best For: Cracking Wi-Fi passwords via FMS Attack for free

AirCrack is a complimentary or free desktop program utilized to crack Wi-Fi passwords. This software is capable of cracking both WEP and WPA passwords.

Additionally, it provides features for enhancing Wi-Fi security, including monitoring and testing connections. It analyzes multiple encrypted packets using a predefined algorithm to crack hidden passwords.

Supported Platforms: Works on Linux, Windows, OS X, eComStation2, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD

Features of AirCrack

• Leverages FMS attack techniques.
• Supports WPA as well as WEP passwords.

Pros and Cons of AirCrack

Pricing: AirCrack is a free password decoder.

• Cain and Abel

Best For: Analyzing weaknesses of password security for free on the Windows application.

Cain and Abel is a no-cost password-cracking software designed for forensic personnel, network experts, and security professionals. This software can function as a network data sniffer, enabling the monitoring of network activity.

Furthermore, it is capable of recovering passwords through various techniques such as recording VoIP, decoding encrypted passwords, revealing cached passwords, and more.

Supported Platforms: Windows

Features of Cain and Abel

• Acts like a sniffer to monitor traffic.
• Leverages Dictionary attacks, Cryptanalysis attacks, and Brute Force attacks.
• Sniffing on SSH-1, HTTPS, and APR protocols.

Pros and Cons of Cain and Abel

Pricing: Cain and Abel is a free zip password cracking tool.

• CrackStation

Best For: Free-of-cost online hash cracking

CrackStation is an online platform that allows you to crack password hash at no cost. It employs a technique similar to Dictionary Attack, incorporating both dictionary-based words as well as passwords obtained from password dumps.

The platform cracks password hashes simply by utilizing pre-calculated lookup tables that consist of more than 14 billion entries.

Supported Platforms: Linux, macOS, and Windows

Features of CrackStation

• Supports NTLM, LM, sha384, ripeMD160, sha512, whirlpool, and more.
• Leverages the look-up table to crack passwords
• Exclusively works for ‘non-salted hashes’

Pros and Cons of CrackStation

Pricing: CrackStation is a free online hash cracker.

• RainbowCrack

Best For: Using techniques like time-memory on a large scale to crack password hashes.

Another free-to-use desktop application for password cracking is RainbowCrack. Users leverage this software to recover passwords from different online applications.

It employs a time-memory method to compute passwords and stores the results in a rainbow table, enabling the use of brute-force techniques to crack passwords.

Supported Platforms: Linux and Windows

Features of RainbowCrack

• Optimized time memory for table creation, lookup, and conversion.
• Supports GPU acceleration and multiple-core processing.
• Supports SHA2 Tables, MD5 Tables, and NTLM Tables.

Pros and Cons of RainbowCrack

Pricing: It is a free wifi password unlocker.

• ophCrack

Best For: Free password cracking for Windows OS.

ophCrack utilizes rainbow tables and operates on a time-memory system to crack passwords. This online application has already recovered approximately 99.99% of alphanumeric passwords in just seconds.

Apart from that, it offers extensive functionality, including support for multi-threading, cookie fuzzing, recursion, and more.

Supported Platforms: Windows

Features of ophCrack

• Cracks LM and NTLM password hashes.
• Adopts Brute force technique.
• LiveCD to simplify password cracking method.
• CSV and audit mode support.
• Support for encrypted SAM.

Pros and Cons of ophCrack

Pricing: ophCrack is a free password sniffer.

• THC Hydra

Best For: Testing security features of an application by researchers and security consultants.

THC Hydra is a freely available application that enables researchers and security consultants to assess the effectiveness of security features. It is compatible with a wide array of security protocols, making it one of the most versatile password cracker tools.

This tool utilizes Dictionary and Brute Force method and is particularly useful for software developers and security specialists.

Supported Platforms: Unix, macOS, and Windows

Features of THC Hydra

• Supports 50+ protocols including Oracle, HTTPS, Telnet, SID, and more.
• Support for mobile systems including Android, Blackberry, and iPhone.

Pros and Cons of THC Hydra

Pricing: THC Hydra is a free hydra password cracker.

• WFuzz

Best For: Analyzing and discovering vulnerabilities to website applications for free.

WFuzz is a software designed for Brute Force apps with the aim of identifying vulnerabilities. It is used to discover unlinked resources like scripts, directories, and servlets. This software supports various protocols including SQL, XSS, LDAP, and others.

Supported Platforms: Supports Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Features of WFuzz

• Has a modular framework
• Provides custom plugins and tests.

Pros and Cons of WFuzz

Pricing: WFuzz is a free WinRAR password cracker online.

• Brutus Password Cracker

Best For: Retrieving usernames and passwords from operating systems, applications, and websites.

Brutus Password Cracker employs the Dictionary Attack technique to retrieve any hidden or forgotten passwords. This software is specifically designed for cracking easy and simple passwords. Apart from that, the desktop application is exclusively compatible with Windows OS only.

Supported Platforms: Windows

Features of Brutus Password Cracker

• Supports NetBus, POP3, NNTP, Telnet, HTTP, FTP, SMB, IMAP, etc.
• Multiple authentication engine
• Brute force Configuration
• Support for Socks Proxy

Pros and Cons of Brutus Password Cracking Tool

Pricing: Brutus Password Cracker is available for free. It is the best hacking software to crack passwords.

How Password Cracking Tools Work?

Password cracking tools work by employing various techniques to try different combinations of passwords until the correct one is found. These tools use methods like dictionary attacks, brute force, rainbow table attacks, and hybrid attacks.

In a brute force attack, the tool systematically tries every possible combination of characters until the password is cracked. A dictionary attack involves using a pre-existing list of commonly used passwords, words, or phrases to gain access.

Rainbow table attacks use precomputed tables containing hash values of passwords, allowing for quicker password matching. Hybrid attacks combine elements of both brute force and dictionary attacks. Overall, password-cracking tools leverage these techniques to test different possibilities to recover passwords.

Comparison of Top 5 Password Cracking Tools

Here is the list of top five password cracking tools along with their comparison based on metrics like platform, features, supported protocols, and price.

Password Cracking Tools	Platform	Supported Protocols	Features	Price
CrackStation	• Windows • macOS • Linux	• NTLM • LM • MySQL 4.1+ • Whirlpool, etc.	• Online Hash Cracker • Look-up Table	Free
Brutus	Windows	• POP3 • SMB • IMAP • HTTP • FTP • NNTP, etc.	• Multistage authentication • Support for Socks Proxy • Brute Force Tool Configuration	Free
Password Cracker	Windows	N/A	• Hidden Password Viewer • Multi-language Support	Free
RainbowCrack	Linux & Windows	• SHA2 Tables • MD5 Tables • NTLM Tables	• Optimized time-memory tool for lookup • Table creation and conversion. • Supports GPU acceleration and multiple core processing.	Free
AirCrack	• FreeBSD • NetBSD • Windows • OS X • Linux, etc.	WEP & WPA	• FMS Attack Technique • Supports WPA & WEP password	Free

Conclusion

Password cracking tools mentioned in this blog serve different purposes and cater to different needs. When it comes to retrieving concealed passwords on Windows, Brutus is a suitable option. For remote recovery of passwords, John the Ripper, CrackStation, as well as ophCrack are highly recommended.

Web app developers must consider Medusa, ophCrack, or WFuzz to identify vulnerabilities. Apart from that, to discover weaknesses in Windows OS protocols, Cain and Abel proved to be the most effective password cracking tools.

Experts in Network Security should explore RainbowCrack and THC Hydra to identify system vulnerabilities. Lastly, for those seeking to recover WiFi passwords, AirCrack software is highly recommended.

FAQs Related to Password Cracker Tools

Research Process:

• Time taken to research and write this article: To write this article, a total of 14 hours have been spent on proper research as well as writing.
• Total tools researched: 21
• Top tools shortlisted for review: 12

Related Categories: Password Management Software | Identity Access Management Software | Cyber Security Software