Hackfest - Level UP

Interview Format Carlis interviews EvilMog
Tone: Conversational, technically dense but accessible, lightly irreverent

Opening / Introduction

We cover who we are, our backgrounds and experience as applicable to the talk topic:

• Chris Carlis is a career penetration tester experienced in password cracking but with a deep feeling that he could be cracking passwords “better”. More effectively, more efficiently, faster, smarter. He has QUESTIONS.

• Dustin (EvilMog) Heywood is an industry recognized expert in password cracking (also Penetration Tester, Red Teamer, Vulnerability Analyst, AI Researcher, Security Researcher, PKI Specialist, Network Ninja, System Administrator (Linux & Windows), Exploit Developer, Phisher, Systems Automator, HSM Guru, retired member of Team Hashcat and frequent Security Conference Speaker). He has ANSWERS.

We will briefly cover some the basic constraints that impact password cracking (e.g. time/money trade-offs, cracking goals) and how they inform the discussion and decisions in the follow sections.

Hardware Considerations

In this section we’ll briefly discuss the evolution of cracking hardware, from CPU based cracking to EvilMog using ALL of IBM’s cloud at once. Diving into cracking hardware options, looking to cover questions:

• Which video cards are the “best” vs. the “best value” for my budget?
• Aside from the video cards, what other hardware considerations might be a bottleneck to cracking?
• Should I build a cracking rig myself or buy a pre-built?
• Do I need dedicated cracking rig or can I just use the “cloud”?

Software & Tooling

• Moving from hardware to software, we will look at a
• Linux vs Windows (vs MacOS?) Is there a strong reason for one over another?
• Is dealing with NVIDIA drivers always a nightmare or do I just fail at computer?
• Are there jobs/hash format where John the Ripper would be a better choice than Hashcat?
• What other cracking support tools should I have in my arsenal?

Wordlists, Rules & Resources

After we have our rig ready for cracking we likely still need some additional resources. We will cover the basic of wordlists and rules and discuss:

• Are we better using a large wordlist or a large rule set?
• Where to find quality resources online?
• Should I be making my own rules or wordlists?
• What are good ways to build a wordlist for a specific target using OSINT or other context?

Methodologies

In this section we will quickly review the Hashcat attack types and discuss methodologies for different cracking scenarios. For example:

• Cracking for speed vs. cracking for coverage
• Cracking a corporate domain dump vs. a single bcrypt hash

We will cover some iterative cracking techniques that can improve results against larger hash lists and when to kill a job in the face of diminishing returns to avoid wasting time.

Additional Topics

We’ll wrap up with a few additional related discussion topics:
- Rainbow tables and the legacy of legacy Net-NTLMv1
- Someone’s got to say it: The use of Generative AI in Password Cracking

Audience Q&A

Carlis can’t be the only one with questions.

Closing

• A review what was covered and links to mentioned resources
• Should time remain, Carlis and EvilMog will perform karaoke.