22.2 Online vs Offline Attacks, and Wordlists
Don prakarche password attacks aahet:
| Type | Where | Speed | Detectable? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online | Against a live service (SSH, web login) | Slow – network + lockouts | Yes – shows in logs | Hydra on SSH |
| Offline | Against captured hashes on your own machine | Very fast – millions/sec | No – attacker has the file | John, Hashcat |
Offline is far faster because there is no network and no lockout – which is exactly why leaked hash databases are so dangerous, and why slow hashing matters.
Wordlists are files of likely passwords. Kali ships rockyou.txt (14 million real leaked passwords):
ls -l /usr/share/wordlists/ # available lists
sudo gunzip /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz # unzip it once
wc -l /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt # count the entries
Rules mutate a wordlist (add numbers, capitalise, swap letters for symbols) so password also becomes Password1, p@ssw0rd, and so on – this catches most human passwords without a full brute force.
Ravindra Bagale's Tip
Students lagech "brute force" (sagle combinations) suru kartat – to 8 characters sathi varsha-varsha lagto. Kharya jagat 90% passwords ek changli wordlist + rules ne miltat, karan lok andaj lavta yenare passwords thevtat. Aadhi wordlist, mag brute force.
Practice task
Unzip rockyou.txt and count its lines. Search it for three common weak passwords (grep -n '^password$' rockyou.txt). Write why using any word from this list is dangerous.