CRACK(8)                                                      System Manager's Manual                                                     CRACK(8)

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 distribu-
       tion 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.

SEE ALSO

       You  will  find  more  documentation about Crack in the text files available in /usr/share/doc/crack-common Documentation includes the pro-
       gram's Manual (in HTML and Text files), the User's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), examples, articles and even some humour.

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <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)