How to identify and crack an MD5 hash

MD5 is an raw / unsalted 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 MD5 entirely in your browser — your hash is never uploaded. A typical example looks like this:

5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99

Cracking MD5 with hashcat

Save the hash to a file and run hashcat in mode -m 0. Start with a wordlist such as rockyou.txt:

echo '5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 0 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

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

echo '5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 0 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -r /usr/share/hashcat/rules/best64.rule

Cracking MD5 with John the Ripper

John the Ripper can attack the same hash with the raw-md5 format:

echo '5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99' > hash.txt && john --format=raw-md5 --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hash.txt