Cracking Stats for Q3 2014

Analyzes cracked NTLM domain hashes from a year of penetration tests to publish the top ten password masks, dominated by seasonal patterns like Spring15 and Fall2015.

NetSPI reviews its 2014 cracking stats: of 90,977 collected Windows domain hashes, 85.52% cracked, with seasonal patterns like Spring2014, Password1, and company-name variants dominating the hits.

NetSPI's Q2 2014 cracking report: of 23,898 collected domain hashes, 89.82% cracked, eight-character passwords dominated, and 'Changem3' topped the list at 820 instances.

NetSPI's Q1 2014 cracking report: of 10,050 collected domain hashes, 74.73% were cracked, 'Password1' topped the list at 606 instances, and eight-character passwords dominated.

Are rainbow tables still worth it for LM hashes? NetSPI compares table lookups with GPU brute force, explaining the format's two case-insensitive seven-character halves that favor GPU cracking.

NetSPI details its GPU cracking methodology on a 1,000-hash sample: crack legacy LM hashes first, run dictionary attacks with rules, then apply the 43 most common mask patterns for quick wins.