A Simple MD5 Password Cracking Program using Python

While on my way to completion of my program in Information Systems at University of Cincinnati, I stumbled upon this very interesting assignment in my Cloud Computing course offered by the computer science department. It was a simple 4 or less character strings password breaker that attacks a given 32 or less characters’ hex string and provides the strings that are in its VALUE BUCKET. For example we have the sample execution :

Attacking d077f…

{‘found’: [‘cat’, ‘gkf9’]}

In the aforementioned example we are attacking the first 5 characters of a 32 digit hashed hex string where the values collide. That’s another topic of interest that I will discuss later.

The program uses mincemeat.py module from https://github.com/bigsandy/mincemeatpy. This is a Python 2.7.x Map Reduce library that can divide map and reduce tasks to distributed clients to make tasks faster. In my upcoming posts I will write about Map Reduce and Hadoop.


  • Generate all possible strings of size 1 to 4 using (0-9) and (a-z)
  • This can be done in various ways like using pre-built libraries or by some fresh logic like generating first the two character strings and then looping them and appending the same two character strings to them. Once ready, we can choose any series from the list starting with any value from 0 to z ,say , 0000 to 0zzz and consider their last three characters as another addition to our main list. Once done, we can take two character strings and append to the main list and finally, one character strings. This way, we have a total list generating all possibilities of strings form 1 to 4 characters of {0-9 and a-z} in any combination.

  • Build grains using modulus technique and send to map function.
  • In the original list ‘bigdata’ we find the length of the list as len(bigdata) and find all its factors. Once found, we can think of the possible number of clients that will execute the map functions and divide the list accordingly in a dictionary of lists , say, {[‘0’, ‘list-chunk1’],[‘1′,’list-chunk2’]…} and build a datasource dictionary using this to be sent to the servers.

  • Since the map function and reduce function cannot use global variables from the parent program we have to pass the input hashed hex string in the datasource itself by a simple technique of sending a dictionary within a dictionary. So, instead of {[‘0’, ‘list-chunk1’],[‘1′,’list-chunk2’]…} the datasource looks like {[‘0’, {‘d077f’,’list-chunk1′}],[‘1’,{‘do77f’,’list-chunk2′]}…} etc where every key value pair is being sent to a separate map function or a different client. This can be unwrapped in the map function to obtain the hashed hex string ‘d077f’ and the list that has to be hashed string wise to check if its first five characters match ‘d077f’ (example).

  • Send output from map to reduce function
  • If a match occurs, send the hashed query string ‘d077f’ (example) and the values that hash to it to reduce function.

  • Send output from reduce function to the parent program
  • If map sends a match, capture the results and aggregate all such results into a single list. Example, {‘d077f’, [‘cat’,’wtf’]} send it to the parent program.

  • Capture reduce functions output
  • Once the parent function receives data from the reduce function the data can be displayed.

Program : 

import hashlib
import string
import itertools
import sys
import mincemeat

inputx = sys.argv[1]
deadlist2=[] #Final List
deadlist1string = []
deadlist2string = []
print "Attacking %s..."%sys.argv[1]
m = range(0,10)
for num in m:
for char in list(string.lowercase):
for char in deadlist1string:
	for inchar in deadlist1string:
		#First two chars

#second two chars
for stringx in deadlist:
	for stringx2 in deadlist:

length3char = len(deadlist2)/(36)
listFor3Digits = deadlist2[:length3char]

#print listFor3Digits
for stringx in listFor3Digits:
	singlestring = stringx

'''listx = []
haha = len(deadlist2)
for i in xrange(1,haha+1):
	if (haha%i == 0):

bigdata = []
#print deadlist2[::5188]
for i in xrange(0,333):
		loldict = {}
		loldict[inputx] = deadlist2[(5188*i):(5188*(i+1))]
		loldict = {}

datasource = dict(enumerate(bigdata))#333*5188 - 333 key value pairs where values are lists
#chunkData = list(itertools.islice(datasource.items(), 1,2)) 

def mapfn(k, v):
	for key in v.keys():
		for w in v[key]:
			if hashlib.md5(w).hexdigest()[:len(key)] == key:
				yield hashlib.md5(w).hexdigest()[:len(key)], w

def reducefn(k, vs):
	result = vs
	return result

s = mincemeat.Server()
s.datasource = datasource
s.mapfn = mapfn
s.reducefn = reducefn

results = s.run_server(password="changeme")
for mm in results:
	found = {}
	found["found"] = results[sys.argv[1]]
	print found
	found = {}

3 thoughts on “A Simple MD5 Password Cracking Program using Python

  1. Hi,

    Thanks for the great post.
    Unfortunately getting an error in the below line. Can you have a look


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