Password Attack Techniques

• Online Brute Force — Hydra, Medusa — Try passwords against live services (SSH, FTP)
• Offline Cracking — Crack captured password hashes without network interaction
• Pass-the-Hash (PtH) — Use the hash directly without cracking it (Windows attacks)
• Credential Stuffing — Use known username/password pairs from breached databases

Hashcat Command Examples

• hashcat -m 0 hashes.txt rockyou.txt — MD5 dictionary attack
• hashcat -m 1000 hashes.txt rockyou.txt — NTLM (Windows) hash cracking
• hashcat -m 0 hashes.txt -a 3 ?a?a?a?a?a — Brute force 5-char passwords

Linux Privilege Escalation

• SUID Binaries — Find executables with SUID bit: find / -perm -u=s -type f 2>/dev/null
• Sudo Misconfigurations — sudo -l to list what you can run as root
• Weak Cron Jobs — Check /etc/crontab for writable scripts run by root
• Kernel Exploits — Search CVE databases for unpatched kernel vulnerabilities
• Tool: LinPEAS — Automated Linux privilege escalation enumeration script