HPC Password Cracker

Purpose

The HPC Password Cracker project is a password cracker that supports OpenMPI, Open MP technologies. Passwords values provided at the command line are expected to be hashed values using sha256sum encryption.

How to hash a password for testing

echo -n 'test' | sha256sum

Compilation Notes

1. Be certain to install the libssl-dev package prior to compilation. On Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

2. Run make clean between implementations to ensure the appropriate binaries are available for each individual implementation.

Serial Implementation

How to compile:

Run make: make serial

How to run dictionary attack:

Pass in the full path of the dictionary file.

./bin/serial-cracker --dictionary dictionary_files/100_pass.txt --password $(echo -n '123456' | sha256sum) --verbose

or using short option names:

./bin/serial-cracker -d dictionary_files/100_pass.txt -p $(echo -n '123456' | sha256sum) -v

How to run brute force attack:

./bin/serial-cracker --bruteforce --lowercase --uppercase --numbers --symbols -p $(echo -n 'test' | sha256sum) --verbose

or using short option names:

./bin/serial-cracker -bluns -p $(echo -n 'test' | sha256sum) -v

Parallel Implementation - MPI

How to pre-split files for MPI dictionary attack:

Provide the number of lines per file. (E.g., With four processes and 100 passwords, we need four files. Divide the 100 passwords evenly into 25 per file.)

mkdir -p temp && split -d -l 25 dictionary_files/100_pass.txt temp/file_

Note: A current limitation here is the need to have the number of passwords even divisible by the number of processes.

How to compile:

Run make: make mpi

How to run dictionary attack:

Pass in the "temp" directory for the location of the split files to be processed across processes.

mpirun -np 4 ./bin/mpi-cracker -d temp -p $(echo -n '123456' | sha256sum) -v

How to run brute force attack:

mpirun -np 4 ./bin/mpi-cracker -bluns -p $(echo -n 'test' | sha256sum) -v

Parallel Implementation - OpenMP

How to compile:

Run make: make omp

How to run dictionary attack:

Pass in the full path of the dictionary file.

OMP_NUM_THREADS=4 ./bin/omp-cracker -d dictionary_files/100_pass.txt -p $(echo -n '123456' | sha256sum) -v

How to run brute force attack:

OMP_NUM_THREADS=4 ./bin/omp-cracker -bluns -p $(echo -n 'test' | sha256sum) -v

Parallel Implementation - CUDA

Experemental: Only available for Brute Force attack. Also, in its current state, this solution is unoptimized and is not much faster than the serial version.

How to compile:

Run make: make cuda

How to run brute force attack:

./bin/cuda-cracker -bluns -p $(echo -n 'test' | sha256sum) -v

Install MPI on Ubuntu

Run from command line: sudo apt install libopenmpi-dev

Authors

• Donna Harris
• Ma Luo
• Will Anderson