How to identify and crack a Joomla (md5:salt) hash

Joomla (md5:salt) is a 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 Joomla (md5:salt) entirely in your browser — your hash is never uploaded. A typical example looks like this:

9e4e1c0b6c1a0d8e7f6a5b4c3d2e1f00:abcdef0123456789

Cracking Joomla (md5:salt) with hashcat

Save the hash to a file and run hashcat in mode -m 11. Start with a wordlist such as rockyou.txt:

echo '9e4e1c0b6c1a0d8e7f6a5b4c3d2e1f00:abcdef0123456789' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 11 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

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

echo '9e4e1c0b6c1a0d8e7f6a5b4c3d2e1f00:abcdef0123456789' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 11 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -r /usr/share/hashcat/rules/best64.rule

Cracking Joomla (md5:salt) with John the Ripper

John the Ripper can attack the same hash with the dynamic_4 format:

echo '9e4e1c0b6c1a0d8e7f6a5b4c3d2e1f00:abcdef0123456789' > hash.txt && john --format=dynamic_4 --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hash.txt