Is an Ansible Vault hash reversible?

No. Ansible Vault is a one-way hash; you cannot reverse it. You can only guess inputs and compare, which is what hashcat and John do.

What is the hashcat mode for Ansible Vault?

Use `-m 16900` to tell hashcat to treat the input as Ansible Vault.

How long does it take to crack Ansible Vault?

Ansible Vault is fast to compute, so weak passwords often fall in seconds to minutes on a GPU; strong, long passwords remain infeasible.

Is an Ansible Vault hash reversible?

No. Ansible Vault is a one-way hash; you cannot reverse it. You can only guess inputs and compare, which is what hashcat and John do.

What is the hashcat mode for Ansible Vault?

Use `-m 16900` to tell hashcat to treat the input as Ansible Vault.

How long does it take to crack Ansible Vault?

Ansible Vault is fast to compute, so weak passwords often fall in seconds to minutes on a GPU; strong, long passwords remain infeasible.

How to identify and crack an Ansible Vault hash

Ansible Vault is an application hash type. It is fast and typically unsalted, which makes weak passwords recoverable quickly on consumer GPU hardware. This page shows how to recognise it and the exact commands to attack it.

All identification runs locally in WebAssembly. The commands below write the hash to a local file on your machine — nothing is sent to this site.

Identifying the hash

The hash identifier on the home page detects Ansible Vault entirely in your browser — your hash is never uploaded. A typical example looks like this:

$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256\n33363965326261303234...

Cracking Ansible Vault with hashcat

Save the hash to a file and run hashcat in mode -m 16900. Start with a wordlist such as rockyou.txt:

echo '$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256\n33363965326261303234...' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 16900 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

Add a rule set to mutate dictionary words (capitalisation, leetspeak, appended digits) and dramatically widen coverage:

echo '$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256\n33363965326261303234...' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 16900 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -r /usr/share/hashcat/rules/best64.rule

Cracking Ansible Vault with John the Ripper

John the Ripper can attack the same hash with the ansible format:

echo '$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256\n33363965326261303234...' > hash.txt && john --format=ansible --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hash.txt