Kali Linux is a Debian distribution operating system that comes with many installed tools. This operating system is provided to help with security checks and penetration testing. In this post, we decided to introduce a powerful password-generation tool in Kali Linux (Crunch).
When we use the word Linux, we mean the entire Linux operating system. All Linux operating systems have different distributions, each of which has its name and is privately distributed and supported by a company. One of the types of Linux distribution is Kali Linux.
Kali Linux is a security version of the Linux operating system that is mostly designed for security penetration testing. With the variety of plugins and security applications that come with it, this operating system makes it a suitable tool for penetration testing, reverse engineering, and security research.
Kali Linux is actually a unique operating system that is using by everyone, both good and bad. It can be used to discover and fix security vulnerabilities. One of the applications of Kali Linux is hacking with Kali Linux and penetration testing with Kali Linux, which both security experts and hackers do. In other words, Kali is like a sharp knife in the toolbox.
The crunch tool is a tool in the field of creating a password list and is one of the most powerful in this field. In other words, the Crunch tool is a word list generator where you can use a standard or any character set to generate word lists. Word lists are creating by combining and permuting a set of characters. You can select the number of characters and the size of the list.
This program supports numbers and symbols, uppercase and lowercase letters separately, and Unicode. Among the important features of this tool, the following capabilities can be mentioned:
Before starting the installation, we recommend that you use the Linux VPS server plans provided on our website and benefit from the high quality and speed of these servers. After getting familiar with Crunch and its capabilities in the previous sections, now it’s time to learn how to install it. Installing Crunch on Kali Linux is very easy, just run the following command:
sudo apt install crunch
This will download and install the crunch package from the official Kali Linux repository. You may need to enter your password and confirm the installation.
To check if Crunch is installed correctly, you can run the following command:
crunch -h
This will display the help page of Crunch, which shows the usage, syntax, and options of the tool. You can also see some examples of how to use Crunch to generate wordlists.
After installing Crunch, at this stage, we want to teach you how to generate passwords with Crunch. To do this, you must follow the steps below.
To create a word list of specific numbers, you can run the following command. Note that this command produces a list of 110 one- and two-digit number words with all combinations of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. It is interesting to know that you can use the alphabet.
crunch 1 2 0123456789
Now you can save the created word list in a file by running the following command. The command you see creates a list, and then it copies the same into a text file called wordlist.txt:
crunch 1 2 0123456789 >wordlist.txt
Now you can use the following command to save the list of words in a file with the -o option:
crunch 1 2 0123456789 -o wordlist.txt
Another way to create a password list is to use the rainbow charset file that you can see below:
crunch 2 3 -f /user/share/rainbowcrack/charset.txt
You can use the pattern to create a list of words. In the following command, you can use 4 characters, @ % and ^:
crunch 10 10 -t manav^%%%%
,: used for all capital letters.
@: Used for all lowercase letters.
%: Used for all numeric characters.
^: Used for all special characters.
Finally, to create a list of words by changing strings or characters, you can use the following command:
crunch 1 10 -p Hello Manav
As you read in this article, Crunch is a password-generation tool in Kali Linux. But it is interesting to know some tips about generating strong passwords. A good and secure password is one that cannot be guessed and is not exposed by the methods used by hackers. Hackers use Kali Linux OS to find your password by combining numbers, letters, and symbols. They can easily find short passwords in seconds.
As such, strong passwords consist of a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special symbols such as punctuation. A good password should be at least 12 characters long, although we recommend using a longer password. In general, the following are the necessary parameters for a good and secure password:
1) A good password has at least 12 characters; The longer your password is, the better.
2) It has uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols; A password that is a combination of these is harder for hackers to find.
3) It’s not made of a memorable keyboard track.
4) It is not made according to your personal information.
5) It is unique and different for each account.
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