
It is available on every operating system and supports over 300 different types of hashes.

Hashcat is one of the most popular and widely used password crackers in existence. This post describes some of the most commonly used password-cracking tools. Most password-cracking or password finder tools enable a hacker to perform any of these types of attacks. It starts by checking to see if a password can be cracked using a dictionary attack, then moves on to a brute-force attack if it is unsuccessful.

Hash functions are designed to be one-way, meaning that it is very difficult to determine the input that produces a given output. Instead, authentication systems store a password hash, which is the result of sending the password - and a random value called a salt - through a hash function. This would make it far too easy for a hacker or a malicious insider to gain access to all of the user accounts on the system. A well-designed password-based authentication system doesn’t store a user’s actual password.
