Efficiently Managing Large Wordlists in Wi-Fi Password Cracking

Prabhjeetsingh
2 min readSep 8, 2023

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In the world of Wi-Fi password cracking, the use of extensive wordlists is essential for success. However, these large wordlists can quickly consume your storage space. In this guide, we’ll explore an efficient solution to this problem: using huge wordlists without taking up disk space and ensuring that you can stop and resume the cracking process without losing progress.

The Storage Challenge

Large wordlists, while effective for password cracking, can pose a storage challenge, especially if you’re dealing with limited disk space. Storing these massive lists can become impractical and resource-intensive.

A Clever Approach: On-the-Fly Wordlist Generation

To address this issue, we can employ a clever strategy that combines multiple tools: Crunch, John the Ripper, and Aircrack-ng. This approach allows us to generate wordlists on-the-fly, eliminate the need to save them as files and ensure that our cracking progress is saved for future use.

Here’s how it works, broken down step by step:

  1. On-the-Fly Wordlist Generation:

$ crunch 8 12 | john — — stdin — — session = ses1 — — stdout | aircrack-ng -b <target_network_mac> — w — wpa_handshake1–01.cap

· Use the Crunch tool to generate passwords of a specific length (e.g., 8 to 12 characters) directly in the command line.

· Pipe the output of Crunch to John the Ripper using | (pipe symbol) with the — stdin and — stdout options.

· John the Ripper processes the wordlist generated by Crunch and allows you to specify a session name (in this case, “ses1”) to save your progress.

2. Cracking Process with Progress Saved:

· Continue by piping the output of John the Ripper to Aircrack-ng.

· Specify the target network MAC address (-b <target_network_mac>).

· Use the -w option to indicate that Aircrack-ng should expect the wordlist via a pipe.

· Provide the name of the captured handshake file (wpa_handshake1–01.cap) for cracking.

Stopping and Resuming:

To stop the cracking process and resume it later without losing progress, you can use the following command:

$ crunch 8 12 | john — restore=ses1 | aircrack-ng -b <target_network_mac> -w — wpa_handshake1–01.cap

Here, we’re instructing John the Ripper to restore the session named “ses1,” allowing you to continue the cracking process from where you left off.

In conclusion, this efficient approach allows you to utilize extensive wordlists without filling up your disk space. By generating wordlists on the fly and utilizing tools like John the Ripper and Aircrack-ng, you can crack Wi-Fi passwords effectively while ensuring that your progress is saved for future use. This method not only conserves storage but also enhances your password-cracking capabilities.

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Prabhjeetsingh

Talks about Cyber security, Ethical Hacking, Python, Java, Shell Scripting, Computer Networking and Automation - Web, Mobile and API