PDF Password Cracking Using Hashcat

Today we are going learn how to crack the password of PDF file using Hashcat tool. 

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What is PDF?

  • PDF stands for the Portable Document Format, used to display documents in an electronic form independent of the software, hardware or operating system they are viewed on.

What is Hashcat?

  • Hashcat is the world’s fastest CPU-based password recovery tool.
  • Hashcat is the self-proclaimed world’s fastest CPU-based password recovery tool, Examples of hashcat supported hashing algorithms are Microsoft  LM Hashes, MD4, MD5, SHA-family, Unix Crypt formats, MySQL, Cisco PIX.

Practical:

  • Attacker: Kali Linux(OS), Hashcat(Tool), Wordlist.
  • Target: PDF(file)

 ls

  • Here we have pdf2john(hashextractor), sample.pdf(target PDF file), rockyou.txt(wordlist). Now lets extract the hashes of PDF file.
 ./pdf2john sample.pdf

  • The pdf2john has extracted the hashes of the PDF. Copy the hash in a file.
 cat hash.txt

  • Here the hash is saved in a file. Now check for pdf version and module number for hashcat.
  hashcat --help | grep pdf -i

 
 

  file sample.pdf


 
 

  • Here we got that the PDF is version 1.6, so the module number for the hashcat is 10500.
  • Now, its time for crack the password using hashcat using module number -m 10500, hash.txt file and rockyou.txt file.
  • The rockyou.txt file contains 14344394 password.
  • This hashcat cracked the password within 20sec.
 wc -l rockyou.txt

 hashcat -m 10500 hash.txt rockyou.txt



  • Here we got the password of PDF, now try open the pdf with this password.

Be Aware, Be Secure.

Thank You 🙏

 

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