How to identify and crack a MediaWiki $B$ hash

MediaWiki $B$ 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 MediaWiki $B$ entirely in your browser — your hash is never uploaded. A typical example looks like this:

$B$56668501$0cc4502d3d4c5e44db13a4b08e1d4f3a

Cracking MediaWiki $B$ with hashcat

Save the hash to a file and run hashcat in mode -m 3711. Start with a wordlist such as rockyou.txt:

echo '$B$56668501$0cc4502d3d4c5e44db13a4b08e1d4f3a' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 3711 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

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

echo '$B$56668501$0cc4502d3d4c5e44db13a4b08e1d4f3a' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 3711 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -r /usr/share/hashcat/rules/best64.rule

Cracking MediaWiki $B$ with John the Ripper

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

echo '$B$56668501$0cc4502d3d4c5e44db13a4b08e1d4f3a' > hash.txt && john --format=mediawiki --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hash.txt