john-the-ripper --format=raw-md5 hash.txt --wordlist=darkweb2017-top10000.txt
–format=raw-md5 hash.txt what this format indicate. why raw-md5 used for hash.txt
–wordlist=darkweb2017-top10000.txt
Hey there - this is explained in the lab guide for Careers in Cybersecurity 3.2 Lab: Password Cracking:
This tool uses the following switches:
–format (This is the format of the hash you identified with hash-identifier)
–wordlist (This is the wordlist or dictionary that we are using to crack the hash)
John the Ripper will compare our hash with a wordlist made up of several known hashes and their original text. If our hash is in the wordlist we selected, when John the Ripper finishes running, you will see the password displayed in the middle of the output in orange text.
To elaborate, in the previous step, you used the hash-id.py tool to examine the contents of the hash.txt file and identified that the hash contained therein is in the MD5 hash format.
For the purposes of this introductory course, you don’t need a deeper understanding than that. You just need to observe that we’re ultimately able to crack this password.
As you progress through the IT & Cybersecurity Foundations career path - and later in the Penetration Tester career path - we will explain hashes in much greater detail.