How To Install John The Ripper On Windows

"I see my path, merely I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'g going is what inspires me to travel information technology." — Rosalía de Castro

Introduction:

With not bad regret I finally decided to retire my x-year-old MacBook Pro as my personal travel laptop. Part of that is I'll be attending Defcon this year to assistance out #IAmTheCalvary and the #WeHeartHackers initiative by volunteering in the Defcon Biohacking hamlet. Side notation, if you are in Vegas, experience free to driblet past and we tin talk nearly cyber security in a clinical setting. Doctors and nurses hate passwords too!

Getting back on track, I wanted something a bit more than modern to participate in this year's Crack Me If Y'all Can Completion, also equally to play around in the various hacking villages so I bought myself a Microsoft Surface Book. The challenge was while Hashcat has a native Windows build, my experiences getting John the Ripper (JtR) running on Windows in the past have been … troubled. That'southward part of why I loved my sometime MacBook. It just worked (distressing Linux), and JtR ran great on it. Now I could re-image my laptop with Linux or dual kick it but having Excel and Notepad++ makes my life so much meliorate. Plus, I'g really digging the tablet. So before I went ahead and installed VirtualBox and ran JtR in a VM I figured I'd endeavor and install JtR using the new Windows Subsystem on Linux (WSL). Long story curt, it worked slap-up and was straightforward to practise, then I figured I'd share my experiences.

Other Options for Running John the Ripper on Windows

If you want to skip this guide and instead install a pre-congenital executable of JtR, you can obtain a relatively upwardly-to-appointment version here: https://github.com/claudioandre-br/packages/releases/tag/jumbo-dev

Note: I've never run these, then I'm not very familiar with how they perform.

Other options include installing JtR using Cygwin. A guide for doing and then is available here: https://openwall.info/wiki/john/tutorials/win64-howto-build

Finally, a very common option that I referenced to above is to simply install VirtualBox, and and then run JtR in a VM.

Windows Subsystem for Linux:

If yous are wondering what WSL is, you are not alone! At a loftier level, it lets you run Linux programs on Windows without having to recompile them or run them in CygWin. To steal Microsoft'south own words:

The Windows Subsystem for Linux lets developers run a GNU/Linux environment — including most command-line tools, utilities, and applications — straight on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a virtual machine.

You can:

Choose your favorite GNU/Linux distributions from the Microsoft Shop.

Run common command-line gratis software such as grep, sed, awk, or other ELF-64 binaries.

Run Bash shell scripts and GNU/Linux command-line applications including:

Tools: vim, emacs, tmux

Languages: Javascript/node.js, Carmine, Python, C/C++, C# & F#, Rust, Get, etc.

Services: sshd, MySQL, Apache, lighttpd

Install additional software using own GNU/Linux distribution package manager.

Invoke Windows applications using a Unix-like command-line shell.

Invoke GNU/Linux applications on Windows.

The mechanics of it are complicated with significant differences between WSLv1 and WSLv2. This guide was written with WSLv1, though if I get adventurous before Defcon I may try to upgrade to WSLv2.

Enabling WSLv1 and Install a Linux Distro:

The first thing y'all demand to do is enable WSLv1 as it is disabled by default. Equally a off-white alert, this will crave a reboot.

There are several ways to enable WSLv1. I opted to utilize PowerShell. The start pace then is to open an Authoritative case of PowerShell.
Run the following command (ref):

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsytem-Linux

Reboot your organisation when prompted to.
In one case your computer starts support, the next footstep is to pick a Linux distro. Open the Microsoft store and type Linux in the search menu

Side note: Y'all'll exist happy to know that Kali Linux is rated "E for Anybody"!

Important Annotation: All the Linux distros I looked at in the Windows Store, (including Kali), are barebones and do not include graphical desktops, or many tools or installed libraries. It's not like installing a Kali live boot image.
Because Kali doesn't come with whatever tools preconfigured, I opted to go with a base Ubuntu build. That'southward likewise partially considering Kali and Hashcat in the past haven't been an platonic lucifer, so I tend to stay away from information technology on my desktop builds

One time y'all install Ubuntu, you'll however demand to initialize it. To exercise this open PowerShell again, though this fourth dimension you can run it every bit a standard user. For Ubuntu, simply type 'ubuntu'

Yous'll be prompted to create a user business relationship. Become ahead and do and so.
Congratulations, y'all are now running Linux on Windows!

Installing John the Ripper

This guide was written using the haemorrhage-jumbo version of John the Ripper, which is available here: https://github.com/magnumripper/JohnTheRipper
It's beyond the telescopic of this guide on how to install and employ Git on Windows, (I personally like GitKracken). While you can download the source-code as a zip file, I highly recommend downloading information technology using git to make keeping it upwardly to date much easier. With WSLv1, it'due south recommended that yous install the code somewhere besides your new Linux filesystem. I put it in c:\github\JohnTheRipper\. With WSLv2 that changes, only I'll cross that bridge when I endeavor that out. You could also probably install git into Ubuntu and download it that manner, but I didn't try that.
The next step is to install all the required libraries in WSLv1 Ubuntu. Run all the following commands in the PowerShell window in a higher place after starting Ubuntu. If you lot always close your window, you can restart PowerShell and type "ubuntu" to restart Ubuntu.
Update your package libraries. If yous don't do this, the following installs will not piece of work, (as seen in all the errors above the command in the below screenshot)

sudo apt update

Install GCC. Select 'Y'es when prompted. The install will accept a while.

sudo apt install gcc

Install Make

sudo apt install make

Install various libraries required/recommended for JtR Haemorrhage-Jumbo

sudo apt install libssl-dev
sudo apt install libgmp-dev
sudo apt install libkrb5-dev

Navigate to your Windows drive where y'all installed the John the Ripper source-lawmaking. You can admission you C:\ Drive nether the /mnt/c directory. Run the post-obit control to build JtR

./configure && make

The build process will likely take around ten-15 minutes. Later on information technology is done you should see the post-obit. If there are any errors, something went wrong so yous will likely need to perform additional troubleshooting.

Finally navigate to the run directory '../run/' and try to start John the Ripper:

.\john

Congratulations! You are now running John the Ripper on Windows!

Performance:

If you are curious, here is a short snipped of me benchmarking JtR on my PC. Note, this is only running on a unmarried core. I should have also included the –fork=8, which I'll admit I didn't realize worked with the –test option earlier writing this guide.

Laptop Specs:

Microsoft Surface Volume xiii Inch,
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz
sixteen.0 GB Ram

Examination control: ./john –test

Benchmarking: bcrypt ("$2a$05", 32 iterations) [Blowfish 32/64 X3]… (8xOMP) DONE

Speed for cost ane (iteration count) of 32

Raw: 6344 c/s real, 790 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: Raw-MD5 [MD5 256/256 AVX2 8×iii]… DONE

Raw: 61074K c/s real, 61074K c/s virtual

Benchmarking: scrypt (16384, 8, 1) [Salsa20/8 128/128 AVX]… (8xOMP) Washed

Speed for cost 1 (Northward) of 16384, price 2 (r) of eight, toll 3 (p) of 1

Raw: 280 c/s real, 35.0 c/south virtual

Benchmarking: LM [DES 256/256 AVX2]… (8xOMP) Done

Raw: 121470K c/s real, 15241K c/s virtual

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated weblog from Reusable Security authored past Matt Weir. Read the original mail at: https://reusablesec.blogspot.com/2019/08/installing-john-ripper-on-microsofts.html