‘CrackWhore’ a boon to password-request sites

A brute-force password cracking program called CrackWhore written by our Dutch friend SubReality turns out to be clever for more than its name.

The author has rigged it with a phone-home feature (which users can disable) that sends the password combos and URLs of cracked sites to the SubReality.net Website in the form: http://bozo:bozo1@www.lamewebsite.com/members/index.html.

Why is this clever, you ask? Because SR has also put together a little Perl script which automatically posts each new crack as a hyperlink on a page at his site, so that all CrackWhore users can share successful cracks among themselves simply by clicking on the relevant link.

The original inspiration arose from sheer laziness, SR told us. "I wanted a password section on my site but I was too lazy to crack/verify new passwords every day. Since CrackWhore had a couple of thousand users a day already by then, I thought I might as well use their capacity," he explained to The Register.

In addition to the usual features, CrackWhore includes a simple HTML template which Webmasters can use to upload cracks to their own sites, though not with the convenience SR enjoys.

"There may be additions to this though," he told us, "since the source code [to CrackWhore] will soon be available to the general public, and more versions will appear, or so I hope, with new creative features."

Thus customized versions of CrackWhore can be produced which will enable each member of a particular crew to work together efficiently, adding fresh passes to their own site automatically as they're discovered.

An earlier version of the Web site scheme had difficulty keeping the passes fresh, as it tested each one whenever a visitor clicked on it, thereby doubling the number of entry attempts with each combo and hastening their deaths. The current setup shows "only the five most recently cracked passwords. That's easier -- no extra hits on the cracked sites."

The source-code swap and sharing of other bits of information for CrackWhore development will be carried out in a members section planned for the SR site. "The members section will be free, but users will have to submit x number of passwords to the board or something similar. I don't want to ask for money for any services on the site," SR told us. ®