CRUNCH(1)

πŸ“¦
version 3.6 Β· 2 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

πŸ’– crunch(1) β€” General Commands Manual πŸ’–

okay bestie, sit down, grab a strawberry πŸ“, because we're about to talk about crunch β€” the Unix manual page, yes, the whole thing, and no I will not be skipping the boring bits, we're doing this properly.

✨ NAME ✨

crunch β€” generate wordlists from a character set πŸ¦‹

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

crunch <min-len> <max-len> [<charset string>] [options]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So crunch makes a wordlist based on whatever criteria you tell it. That's the whole vibe. And the output? It can go straight to your screen, into a file, or get piped into another program β€” your choice, main character energy πŸ’….

The required parameters are:

  • min-len β€” the minimum length string you want crunch to start at. Bestie, this one is required, even for the parameters that won't even use the value. Yes, even then. No cap.
  • max-len β€” the maximum length string you want crunch to end at. Also required, also even when the parameter won't use the value. The vibes are strict here.
  • charset string β€” you can specify the character sets crunch should use right there on the command line, or you can leave it blank and crunch will use the default character sets 🌈.
okay IMPORTANT, the order MUST BE: lower case characters, then upper case characters, then numbers, then symbols. If you don't follow this order you will not get the results you want. fr fr.

You MUST specify either values for the character type or a plus sign.

NOTE: if you want to include the space character in your character set you must escape it using the \ character, or enclose your character set in quotes, i.e. "abc ". See the examples 3, 11, 12, and 13 for examples πŸ‘€

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -b number[type] β€” specifies the size of the output file. Only works if -o START is used, i.e.: 60MB. The output files will be in the format of starting letter-ending letter, for example: ./crunch 4 5 -b 20mib -o START will generate 4 files: aaaa-gvfed.txt, gvfee-ombqy.txt, ombqz-wcydt.txt, wcydu-zzzzz.txt. Valid values for type are kb, mb, gb, kib, mib, and gib. The first three types are based on 1000 while the last three types are based on 1024. NOTE: there is no space between the number and type. For example 500mb is correct, 500 mb is NOT correct πŸ™ˆ
  • -c number β€” specifies the number of lines to write to the output file. Only works if -o START is used, i.e.: 60. The output files will be in the format of starting letter-ending letter, for example: ./crunch 1 1 -f /pentest/password/crunch/charset.lst mixalpha-numeric-all-space -o START -c 60 will result in 2 files: a-7.txt and 8-\ .txt. The reason for the slash in the second filename is the ending character is space and ls has to escape it to print it. Yes, you will need to put in the \ when specifying the filename because the last character is a space 😭
  • -d numbersymbol β€” limits the number of duplicate characters. -d 2@ limits the lower case alphabet to output like aab and aac. aaa would not be generated as that is 3 consecutive letters of a. The format is number then symbol, where number is the maximum number of consecutive characters and symbol is the symbol of the character set you want to limit, i.e. @,%^. See examples 17-19 πŸ‘‘
  • -e string β€” specifies when crunch should stop early
  • -f /path/to/charset.lst charset-name β€” specifies a character set from the charset.lst
  • -i β€” inverts the output, so instead of aaa,aab,aac,aad, etc you get aaa,baa,caa,daa,aba,bba, etc πŸ”„
  • -l β€” when you use the -t option this option tells crunch which symbols should be treated as literals. This will allow you to use the placeholders as letters in the pattern. The -l option should be the same length as the -t option. See example 15 πŸŽ€
  • -m β€” merged with -p. Please use -p instead. (rip -m, gone but not forgotten πŸ’€)
  • -o wordlist.txt β€” specifies the file to write the output to, eg: wordlist.txt
  • -p charset OR -p word1 word2 ... β€” tells crunch to generate words that don't have repeating characters. By default crunch will generate a wordlist size of #of_chars_in_charset ^ max_length. This option will instead generate #of_chars_in_charset!. The ! stands for factorial. For example, say the charset is abc and max length is 4. Crunch will by default generate 3^4 = 81 words. This option will instead generate 3! = 3x2x1 = 6 words (abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba).
THIS MUST BE THE LAST OPTION! This option CANNOT be used with -s, and it ignores min and max length β€” however you must still specify two numbers. periodt.
  • -q filename.txt β€” tells crunch to read filename.txt and permute what is read. This is like the -p option except it gets the input from filename.txt πŸ“„
  • -r β€” tells crunch to resume generating words from where it left off. -r only works if you use -o. You must use the same command as the original command used to generate the words. The only exception to this is the -s option. If your original command used the -s option you MUST remove it before you resume the session. Just add -r to the end of the original command 🫢
  • -s startblock β€” specifies a starting string, eg: 03god22fs
  • -t @,%^ β€” specifies a pattern, eg: @@god@@@@ where only the @'s, ,'s, %'s, and ^'s will change.
    • @ will insert lower case characters
    • , will insert upper case characters
    • % will insert numbers
    • ^ will insert symbols
  • -u β€” the -u option disables the printpercentage thread. This should be the last option 🧚
  • -z gzip, bzip2, lzma, and 7z β€” compresses the output from the -o option. Valid parameters are gzip, bzip2, lzma, and 7z.
    • gzip is the fastest but the compression is minimal.
    • bzip2 is a little slower than gzip but has better compression.
    • 7z is slowest but has the best compression. πŸ”₯

to be continued, bestie β€” part 2 is coming πŸ’œ

πŸ’– EXAMPLES πŸ’–

Bestie, this is the part where it all clicks. Buckle up, we're doing twenty of these. πŸ“

✨ Example 1 ✨

crunch 1 8

crunch will display a wordlist that starts at a and ends at zzzzzzzz. That's it. That's the whole vibe. πŸ’…

✨ Example 2 ✨

crunch 1 6 abcdefg

crunch will display a wordlist using the character set abcdefg that starts at a and ends at gggggg.

✨ Example 3 ✨

crunch 1 6 abcdefg\

Okay so, there is a space at the end of the character string. In order for crunch to use the space you will need to escape it using the \ character. In this example you could also put quotes around the letters and not need the \, i.e. "abcdefg ". crunch will display a wordlist using the character set abcdefg that starts at a and ends at (6 spaces).

Spaces are so sneaky in shells, no cap. Escape them or quote them, those are your two options. 🫢

✨ Example 4 ✨

crunch 1 8 -f charset.lst mixalpha-numeric-all-space -o wordlist.txt

crunch will use the mixalpha-numeric-all-space character set from charset.lst and will write the wordlist to a file named wordlist.txt. The file will start with a and end with " " (a whole pile of spaces, as promised).

✨ Example 5 ✨

crunch 8 8 -f charset.lst mixalpha-numeric-all-space -o wordlist.txt -t @@dog@@@ -s cbdogaaa

crunch should generate a 8 character wordlist using the mixalpha-numeric-all-space character set from charset.lst and will write the wordlist to a file named wordlist.txt. The file will start at cbdogaaa and end at " dog ".

✨ Example 6 ✨

crunch 2 3 -f charset.lst ualpha -s BB

crunch will start generating a wordlist at BB and end with ZZZ. This is useful if you have to stop generating a wordlist in the middle. Just do a tail wordlist.txt and set the -s parameter to the next word in the sequence. Be sure to rename the original wordlist BEFORE you begin as crunch will overwrite the existing wordlist.

Not me warning you twice: rename. the. file. first. 😭 crunch does not ask permission, she just goes.

✨ Example 7 ✨

crunch 4 5 -p abc

The numbers aren't processed but are needed. (They're literally just there for the format, bestie. 😌)

crunch will generate abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba.

✨ Example 8 ✨

crunch 4 5 -p dog cat bird

The numbers aren't processed but are needed.

crunch will generate birdcatdog, birddogcat, catbirddog, catdogbird, dogbirdcat, dogcatbird.

✨ Example 9 ✨

crunch 1 5 -o START -c 6000 -z bzip2

crunch will generate bzip2 compressed files with each file containing 6000 words. The filenames of the compressed files will be first_word-last_word.txt.bz2.

# time ./crunch 1 4 -o START -c 6000 -z gzip
real    0m2.729s
user    0m2.216s
sys     0m0.360s

# time ./crunch 1 4 -o START -c 6000 -z bzip2
real    0m3.414s
user    0m2.620s
sys     0m0.580s

# time ./crunch 1 4 -o START -c 6000 -z lzma
real    0m43.060s
user    0m9.965s
sys     0m32.634s
size  filename
30K   aaaa-aiwt.txt
12K   aaaa-aiwt.txt.gz
3.8K  aaaa-aiwt.txt.bz2
1.1K  aaaa-aiwt.txt.lzma

Look at lzma doing the absolute most with that 43.060s. She's slow but she's tiny. Main character energy tbh. ⭐

✨ Example 10 ✨

crunch 4 5 -b 20mib -o START

will generate 4 files: aaaa-gvfed.txt, gvfee-ombqy.txt, ombqz-wcydt.txt, wcydu-zzzzz.txt

the first three files are 20MBs (real power of 2 MegaBytes) and the last file is 11MB.

✨ Example 11 ✨

crunch 3 3 abc + 123 !@# -t @%^

will generate a 3 character long word with a character as the first character, and number as the second character, and a symbol for the third character. The order in which you specify the characters you want is important. You must specify the order as lower case character, upper case character, number, and symbol. If you aren't going to use a particular character set you use a plus sign as a placeholder. As you can see I am not using the upper case character set so I am using the plus sign placeholder. The above will start at a1! and end at c3#.

The order is not vibes-based, bestie, it's rigid: lowercase, uppercase, number, symbol. Memorise it. πŸŽ€

✨ Example 12 ✨

crunch 3 3 abc + 123 !@# -t ^%@

will generate 3 character words starting with !1a and ending with #3c.

✨ Example 13 ✨

crunch 4 4  + + 123 + -t %%@^

the plus sign (+) is a place holder so you can specify a character set for the character type. crunch will use the default character set for the character type when crunch encounters a + (plus sign) on the command line. You must either specify values for each character type or use the plus sign. I.E. if you have two characters types you MUST either specify values for each type or use a plus sign. So in this example the character sets will be:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
123
!@#$%^&*()-_+=~`[]{}|\:;"'<>,.?/

there is a space at the end of the above string

the output will start at 11a! and end at "33z ". The quotes show the space at the end of the string.

✨ Example 14 ✨

crunch 5 5 -t ddd@@ -o j -p dog cat bird

any character other than one of the following: @,%^ is the placeholder for the words to permute. The @,%^ symbols have the same function as -t.

If you want to use @,%^ in your output you can use the -l option to specify which character you want crunch to treat as a literal.

So the results are

birdcatdogaa
birdcatdogab
birdcatdogac
<skipped>
dogcatbirdzy
dogcatbirdzz

✨ Example 15 ✨

crunch 7 7 -t p@ss,%^ -l a@aaaaa

crunch will now treat the @ symbol as a literal character and not replace the character with a uppercase letter.

this will generate

p@ssA0!
p@ssA0@
p@ssA0#
p@ssA0$
<skipped>
p@ssZ9

✨ Example 16 ✨

crunch 5 5 -s @4#S2 -t @%^,2 -e @8 Q2 -l @dddd -b 10KB -o START

crunch will generate 5 character strings starting with @4#S2 and ending at @8 Q2. The output will be broken into 10KB sized files named for the files starting and ending strings.

✨ Example 17 ✨

crunch 5 5 -d 2@ -t @@@%%

crunch will generate 5 character strings staring with aab00 and ending at zzy99. Notice that aaa and zzz are not present.

That's the -d limit doing its thing. No triple letters for you. πŸ’€

✨ Example 18 ✨

crunch 10 10 -t @@@^%%%%^^ -d 2@ -d 3% -b 20mb -o START

crunch will generate 10 character strings starting with aab!0001!! and ending at zzy 9998 (yes, those trailing spaces are part of it, she's like that). The output will be written to 20mb files.

✨ Example 19 ✨

crunch 8 8 -d 2@

crunch will generate 8 characters that limit the same number of lower case characters to 2. Crunch will start at aabaabaa and end at zzyzzyzz.

✨ Example 20 ✨

crunch 4 4 -f unicode_test.lst japanese -t @@%% -l @xdd

crunch will load some Japanese characters from the unicode_test character set file. The output will start at @ζ—₯00 and end at @θͺž99.

Unicode in a charset file? Iconic. 🌸

🌈 REDIRECTION 🌈

You can use crunch's output and pipe it into other programs. The two most popular programs to pipe crunch into are: aircrack-ng and airolib-ng. The syntax is as follows:

crunch 2 4 abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz | aircrack-ng /root/Mycapfile.cap -e MyESSID -w-
crunch 10 10 12345 --stdout | airolib-ng testdb -import passwd -

πŸŽ€ NOTES πŸŽ€

  1. Starting in version 2.6 crunch will display how much data is about to be generated. In 2.7 it will also display how many lines will be generated. Crunch will now wait 3 seconds BEFORE it begins generating data to give you time to press Ctrl-C to abort crunch if you find the values are too large for your application.
Those 3 seconds are your last chance, bestie. Use them. πŸ™ˆ
  1. I have added hex-lower (0123456789abcdef) and hex-upper (0123456789ABCDEF) to charset.lst.
  2. Several people have requested that I add support for the space character to crunch. crunch has always supported the space character on the command line and in the charset.lst. To add a space on the command line you must escape it using the / character. See example 3 for the syntax. You may need to escape other characters like ! or # depending on your operating system.
  3. Starting in 2.7 if you are generating a file then every 10 seconds you will receive the % done.
  4. Starting in 3.0 I had to change the -t * character to a , as the * is a reserved character. You could still use it if you put a \ in front of the *. Yes it breaks crunch's syntax and I do my best to avoid doing that, but in this instance it is easier to make the change for long term support.
  5. Some output is missing. A file didn't get generated.

The mostly explanation is you ran out of disk space. If you have verified you have plenty of disk space then the problem is most likely the filename begins with a period. In Linux filenames that begin with a period are hidden. To view them do a ls -l .*

Not the hidden dotfile betrayal 😭 she's there, you just can't see her.
  1. Crunch says The maximum and minimum length should be the same size as the pattern you specified, however the length is set correctly.

This usually means your pattern contains a character that needs to be escaped. In bash you need to escape the followings: &, *, space, \, (, ), |, ', ", ;, <, >.

The escape character in bash is a \. So a pattern that has a & and a * in it would look like this:

crunch 4 4 -t \&\*d@

An alternative to escaping characters is to wrap your string with quotes. For example:

crunch 4 4 -t "&*d@"

If you want to use the " in your pattern you will need to escape it like this:

crunch 4 4 -t "&*\"@"

Please note that different terminals have different escape characters and probably have different characters that will need escaping. Please check the manpage of your terminal for the escape characters and characters that need escaping.

  1. When using the -z 7z option, 7z does not delete the original file. You will have to delete those files by hand.
She leaves the mess for you, fr fr. 🧹

πŸ’œ AUTHOR πŸ’œ

This manual page was written by bofh28@gmail.com

Crunch version 1.0 was written by mimayin@aciiid.ath.cx all later versions of crunch have been updated by bofh28@gmail.com

πŸ¦‹ FILES πŸ¦‹

None.

Literally none. Nothing. Zero files. Love that for us. ✨

πŸ’€ BUGS πŸ’€

If you find any please email bofh28 <bofh28@gmail.com> or post to http://www.backtrack-linux.org

Copyright (c) 2009-2013 bofh28 <bofh28@gmail.com>

This file is a part of Crunch.

Crunch is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2 only of the License.

Crunch is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Crunch. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

And that's the whole page, bestie!! πŸ’– This was Version 3.6, from May 2014, and the page itself is CRUNCH(1). Go forth and generate responsibly, and remember: rename your wordlist before you start. πŸŽ€βœ¨

πŸ“¦ where this page comes from