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Ran19's avatar
Ran19
Bronze I
10 days ago

Brute Force task in an 15 min lab taking over 30 hours to complete

Hello everyone,

I am doing an Immersive Labs about hacking, and there is a lab where I can learn how to crack codes with Hydra using SSH, HTTP, and FTP. The problem is that for the FTP part, I am supposed to brute-force a password (a 4-character password composed of lowercase letters and numbers).

I am using the correct command, but the brute force is extremely slow, doing roughly 1 attempt every 3.5 seconds, which brings the total cracking time to over 30 hours. I waited 2 hours already, which is far too long, especially since the lab has to be extended every 10–15 minutes. However, now it has become personal, and I really want to get this password.

Can anyone help?

I am using the following command:

hydra -l jimmy -x 4:4:1a -f -t 64 ftp://(ip address)    i have tried -t, 4, 8 and 16, doesn't change anything

I also tried creating 4 lists containing all possible passwords and running them in parallel with -P instead of using -x, but I always got too many attempts.

Name of the lab ist:  

Credential Access: Using Hydra

1 Reply

  • SamDickison's avatar
    SamDickison
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager

    Ran19​ I recommend double-checking the lab instructions, your current working directory, and common locations like /usr/share/wordlists/ for a provided password dictionary. Switching from raw generation to a dictionary attack using a provided wordlist with the -P flag will be significantly faster. Although I haven't done the lab, that just what I've gathered from briefly looking into it. Tell me if I'm way off.