OSCP Password Attacks

Question 1

Which tool is primarily used for offline password hash cracking with GPU acceleration?

Accepted Answer

Hashcat

Answer

Hashcat leverages GPU acceleration for extremely fast offline hash cracking, making it the go-to tool for this purpose.

Question 2

Which file on a Linux system stores hashed user passwords when shadow password support is enabled?

Accepted Answer

/etc/shadow

Answer

/etc/shadow stores hashed passwords and account expiry data, readable only by root when shadow passwords are enabled.

Question 3

What Hashcat attack mode (-a) performs a straight dictionary attack using a wordlist without modifications?

Accepted Answer

-a 0

Answer

Hashcat's -a 0 is the straight/dictionary attack mode that reads each line of a wordlist as a candidate password.

Question 4

Which tool is commonly used for online brute force attacks against SSH, FTP, and HTTP services?

Accepted Answer

Hydra

Answer

Hydra is a fast, flexible online password cracking tool supporting numerous protocols including SSH, FTP, and HTTP/HTTPS.

Question 5

What is a rainbow table attack?

Accepted Answer

A precomputed lookup table used to reverse cryptographic hash functions

Answer

Rainbow tables are precomputed tables for reversing hash functions, trading disk storage for cracking speed via time-memory trade-offs.

OSCP Practice Test