During an internal penetration test you obtain a shadow file containing salted SHA-512 password hashes. Your assessment workstation has a high-end GPU, and management wants the fastest offline cracking attempt using open-source software that supports rule-based, mask, and dictionary attacks across multiple GPUs. Which tool best meets these requirements?
Hashcat is an open-source password recovery utility written to take full advantage of GPU hardware. It natively supports rule-based, mask, combinator, and dictionary attacks and scales across multiple GPUs for maximum cracking speed. John the Ripper can use GPU through OpenCL builds but is CPU-centric by default and generally slower. Cain & Abel is Windows-only, CPU-bound, and no longer maintained, while Hydra focuses on online service brute-forcing rather than offline hash cracking. Therefore, hashcat is the most suitable choice for the stated requirements.
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What is a salted SHA-512 hash?
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How do GPUs accelerate password cracking?
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What is the difference between Hashcat and John the Ripper?
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What is the advantage of GPU over CPU for password cracking?
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What are rule-based, mask, and dictionary attacks?
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Why is Hashcat better than John the Ripper for this scenario?
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