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- PGPCrack v0.6b by
- Mark Miller <markm@voicenet.com>
- Copyright (c) Mark Miller 1996
-
- I. SYNTAX
- II. GENERAL INFORMATION
- III. TECHNICAL INFORMATION
- IV. CHANGES
- V. COPYRIGHT
- VI. DISCLAIMER
-
- I. SYNTAX:
-
- The syntax is pretty simple. The command line should be the following:
-
- pgpcrack [phraselist] [pgpfile] <logfile>
-
- "Phraselist" is a list of passphrases that PGPCrack attempts to use to decrypt
- the file "pgpfile". "Logfile" is an optional parameter that will specify to
- what file the cracked password will be written. If this is not specified,
- stderr will be used (Note: it may be a Good Idea to use a "logfile", because
- if the passphrase has any trailing whitespace, this will not be visible on
- stderr and could cause hours of frustration...).
-
- II. GENERAL INFORMATION:
-
- PGPCrack is a program designed to brute-force a conventionally encrypted file
- encrypted with PGP. I will add the capability to crack a secret key Real
- Soon Now. The file "pgpfile" must not be ascii-armored. The file "phraselist"
- should be a file containing all of the passphrases that will be used to
- attempt to crack the encrypted file.
-
- This program is currently in beta. If you have any suggestions or bug reports,
- feel free to e-mail them to me at markm@voicenet.com.
-
- III. TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
-
- Those who are not interested in the technical aspects of PGPCrack can skip
- this section.
-
- PGPCrack works by reading the first 23 bytes of the file to be cracked. The
- last 18 bytes of this array are the only bytes used to crack the file.
- Next it reads each line of the phraselist, removes the newline character,
- hashes the line with MD5, and uses that as a key to decrypt the ten bytes in
- IDEA-CFB mode. PGP can detect whether a valid passphrase has been entered
- by making sure that the 7th and 9th, and the 8th and 10th bytes are the same.
- If it appears that a passphrase is valid, it then uses bytes 0-7 as an IV to
- decrypt the next 8 bytes of the file. If the most significant bit of the first
- byte of this array is 1, then it prints the passphrase.
-
- On a 486/66DX, I found that it takes about 7 seconds to read in a 1.2 megabyte
- passphrase file and try to decrypt the file using every passphrase.
- Considering the fact that the NSA, other government agencies, and large
- corporations have an incredible amount of computing power, the benefit of
- using a large, random passphrase is quite obvious.
-
- IV. CHANGES:
-
- This is a list of changes made from .5b to .6b:
-
- - Passphrase lists in MS-DOS text format are now supported.
-
- - The source code has been cleaned up somewhat.
-
- - The CTB of the decrypted data is checked to reduce the amount of invalid
- passphrases being found valid.
-
- - The program is now more portable.
-
- V. COPYRIGHT:
-
- You are free to distribute this README file and all of the source code that
- comes with this program. You may modify the file pgpcrack.c as long as you
- keep the top comment intact and make note of the modification.
-
- VI. DISCLAIMER:
-
- There is no warranty on this program implied or otherwise. I assume no
- liability for any damages caused by the use of this program including loss
- of data, criminal indictment, or any other loss caused by the use of this
- program, either directly or indirectly. Use at your own risk.
-