I Dedicated 4 Years to Mastering Offline Password Cracking
Learning and science
technical book on password cracking
SHOW HN2026
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I Dedicated 4 Years to Mastering Offline Password Cracking
I Dedicated 4 Years to Mastering Offline Password Cracking
news.ycombinator.com#password cracking#hashcat#offline password attacks#password hashing
How HN took it
12 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 4 critical, out of 23 comments about the project. Thread score +0.37.
Docs: 3 for, 3 againstIdea: 0 for, 1 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive achievement for someone so young
From 4 comments
This is an amazing achievement for someone of any age, but to publish a book with this much research at 18 is phenomenal. I heartily congratulate you. I've hopped through the…
eigenrick on HNNice job! It is a massive achievement to publish a book let alone to be start a career so early at age! Now need to find time read the book. It seems it be quite interesting.
ViAchKoN on HNGreat like accomplishing something like this at the age of 18 is truly remarkable
mujib77 on HNCongratulate on finishing such a big project on a complicated topic, and putting in all this effort so that others can learn as well. I enjoyed reading the first few pages on…
sijmen on HN
Technical content reasonably accurate and interesting
From 1 comment
Thanks for sharing. This looks interesting. Impressive achievement. This book is currently not really relevant for me, so I just skimmed the samples on Amazon. I found the…
raphman on HN
Organized and carefully laid out
From 1 comment
This is an amazing achievement for someone of any age, but to publish a book with this much research at 18 is phenomenal. I heartily congratulate you. I've hopped through the…
eigenrick on HN
Objections
Grammar and style need copyediting; sentences are wordy
From 2 comments
Thanks for sharing. This looks interesting. Impressive achievement. This book is currently not really relevant for me, so I just skimmed the samples on Amazon. I found the…
raphman on HNYea after skimming the samples on Amazon I noticed that nearly every single sentence had at least one comma in it (adding zero value). It feels like I'm reading someones…
copypaper on HN
Some technical statements are imprecise, such as on Windows and hash functions
From 2 comments
A few small things. You might call this nitpicking. And, as I wrote, I found the technical details generally accurate. > "Then there is also the fact that having a fully-fledged…
raphman on HNIt's awkwardly phrased and doesn't really say what it intends to (though, the meaning is obvious after reading it a second or third time). As for it being imprecise, it doesn't…
jfarina on HN
Requests
Cover password mask attacks and advances since EBM
From 1 comment
can you discuss your coverage of password mask attacks, specifically is there any advances since EBM
kelsey98765431 on HN
Share the writing and formatting process
From 2 comments
Congratulations! The book looks great. I would love to hear more about the process of writing and preparing it for publishing. It's self-published? How did you do the typesetting…
andai on HNI too would be interested in hearing about the writing and formatting process. I described my own process as a software engineer and first-time novelist here:…
TeaVMFan on HN
Questions
Is there a newsletter or website for future work?
From 1 comment
Hi Bojta, I just bought your book via Amazon from Germany. Nowadays I only read on my e-reader but wish to support your achievement and bought a hard copy. I'm excited to read…
valina-line on HN
Is there tooling to generate rainbow tables from password regex?
From 1 comment
Nice to see someone going the same path as me! Haven't read the book or used Hashcat, I have a question. Is there anything yet to generate rainbow tables out of password regex?
gettingoverit on HN
Alternatives named
Other password cracking books such as Hash Crack, Ethical Password Cracking and Password Cracking with Kali Linux
From 1 comment
There are actually a few recent books on the topic (no clue about their quality but reviews look positive): Netmux (2019): Hash Crack: Password Cracking Manual¹ James Leyte-Vidal…
raphman on HN
YouTube hashcat tutorials
From 1 comment
The reason is, that using hashcat is not complicated for people who have linux experience and the amount of people wanting to crack a password is probably not that high.…
Tamklomo on HN