Password Attackspassword-crackerrainbow-tableswindowsntlm

Ophcrack

Ophcrack is a Windows password cracker that uses rainbow tables for rapid recovery of alphanumeric passwords. It supports Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 and recovers 99.9% of such passwords in seconds.

Description

Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker that employs a time-memory trade-off using rainbow tables, an improved variant of Hellman’s original trade-off with better performance. The tool is available in two packages: ophcrack with a Qt-based graphical user interface and ophcrack-cli for command-line use only. It can crack passwords from Windows systems including NT/2000/XP/Vista/7, making it useful for penetration testing, password recovery, and security audits.

The GUI version provides an intuitive interface for loading rainbow tables and pwdump files, while the CLI version offers scripting flexibility. Users must download and specify rainbow table directories, such as xp_free_fast or vista_free, to perform cracking tasks. Audit mode and bruteforce options allow customization for different scenarios.

This tool is particularly effective for alphanumeric passwords, succeeding in 99.9% of cases quickly, but requires precomputed tables for operation.

How It Works

Ophcrack uses rainbow tables based on a time-memory trade-off technique, an advancement over Hellman’s original method, to crack Windows LM and NTLM password hashes. Rainbow tables store precomputed hash chains, enabling fast lookup and recovery of plaintext passwords from pwdump files. It supports tables for specific Windows versions like XP and Vista, with options for bruteforce and audit modes to handle edge cases.

Installation

bash
sudo apt install ophcrack

Flags

-adisable audit mode (default)
-Aenable audit mode
-bdisable bruteforce
-Benable bruteforce (default)
-c config_filespecify the config file to use
-Ddisplay (lots of!) debugging information
-d dirspecify tables base directory
-edo not display empty passwords

Examples

Display help and usage information for ophcrack
ophcrack -h
Launch ophcrack in command line using tables 0 and 3 in /path/to/tables/xp_free_fast and all tables in /path/to/tables/vista_free and cracks hashes from pwdump file in.txt
ophcrack -g -d /path/to/tables -t xp_free_fast,0,3:vista_free -f in.txt
Display help for the command-line version ophcrack-cli
ophcrack-cli -h
Run ophcrack with audit mode disabled
ophcrack -a
Run ophcrack with audit mode enabled
ophcrack -A
Specify tables base directory
ophcrack -d /path/to/tables
Run without displaying empty passwords
ophcrack -e
Updated 2026-04-16kali.org ↗