CRACK(8)

💖 CRACK — System Manager's Manual, Section 8 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let's talk about Crack and Crack-Reporter — the password-file-breaking duo. this page is CRACK(8) and it's giving serious sysadmin main character energy. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

Crack, Reporter — programs that break password files. yeah. that's the whole vibe. 🔥

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

Crack [options] [-fmt format] [file ...]
Crack-Reporter [-quiet] [-html]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so this manual page is a brief rundown of the Crack and Crack-Reporter commands. it was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program literally does not have a manual page of its own. instead, there's some documentation hanging out at /usr/share/doc/crack and you are encouraged to read it. fr fr. go read it. 📖

now here's the thing bestie — Crack is not a program designed to break the password of every user in the file. nope. it's designed to find weak passwords in the file, by attacking those sorts of bad passwords that are most likely to be used, in the order in which they would most easily be found — ie: the ones most likely to be used by a moronic user. 😭💀

and listen, Crack is not designed to break user passwords; it's designed to break password files. this is a subtle but important distinction. write that down. ✨

Crack-Reporter will show you what passwords have been cracked, plus view errors that have been detected in the source password files, etc. guesses are listed chronologically, so if you're the kind of user who wants to see incremental changes in the output as Crack keeps running over a course of days or weeks, you're encouraged to wrap your invocations of Crack-Reporter in a script with diff. slay. 💅

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

a summary of options is included below, bestie. 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. spy era. 👀
• -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 — (that's it. that's the option. iykyk.)
• -remote — internal options used to support networking 🤫

and 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) 🤐

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⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

to run Crack:

# Crack -nice 10 /etc/passwd

if a Crack session gets killed accidentally (🙈 it happens), 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. 👑

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /usr/share/Crack — location of the Crack program and scripts 📁
• /var/lib/Crack/ — location for the temporary files used by Crack 🗄️

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🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

you will find more documentation about Crack in the text files available in /usr/share/doc/crack-common. documentation includes the program's Manual (in HTML and Text files), the User's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), examples, articles and even some humour. yes bestie, humour. in a manpage. iconic. 😌

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <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> ✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 go forth and audit those password files responsibly. no cap.

CRACK(8) — from the System Manager's Manual, section 8, straight outta the Debian GNU/Linux manual page world. mwah. 💅🎀🌈