NAME

       Crack, Reporter - programs to break password files

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       This  manual page documents briefly the Crack, and Crack-Reporter commands.  This manual page was written
       for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.  Instead,
       there is some documentation available at /usr/share/doc/crack which you are encouraged to read

       Crack  is not a program designed to break the password of every user in the file.  Rather, it is designed
       to find weak passwords in the file, by attacking those sorts of bad passwords which are most likely to be
       used,  in the order in which they would most easily be found (ie: are most likely to be used by a moronic
       user).

       Crack is not designed to break user passwords; it is designed to break password files.  This is a  subtle
       but important distinction.

       Crack-Reporter will show what passwords have been cracked, as well as view errors that have been detected
       in the source password files, etc.  Guesses  are  listed  chronologically,  so  users  who  wish  to  see
       incremental  changes  in  the  output  as  Crack  continues  to  run  over a course of days or weeks, are
       encouraged to wrap invocations of Crack-Reporter in a script with diff.

OPTIONS

       A summary of options are included below.  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.

       -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

       -remote
              Internal options used to support networking.

              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)

EXAMPLES

       To run Crack

          # Crack -nice 10 /etc/passwd

       If a Crack session is killed accidentally, 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.

FILES

       /usr/share/Crack Location of the Crack program and scripts.  /var/lib/Crack/ Location for  the  temporary
       files used by Crack.

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.

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>

                                                                                                        CRACK(8)