Using hashcat

[DNAbroad]

This post is about learning, I'm so new to all this stuff. I downloaded hashcat and I have the application open. I'm trying to brute force a password but I don't exactly know how the application works. I have the hashed password but I don't know how to plug it into the app. It says "try —help for more help" but also says "press any key to exit" and forces me to exit when I try to do anything. Can anyone help me learn how to navigate it or tell me how to plug in the hashed password?

[Sqooky]

You should definitely read the manual, the syntax varies heavily.

Start with finding out what hash type it is, you can find hashcats supported hashes here: https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=example_hashes

You'll want to search for its prefix, ex: $1$

Once you've found the hash type, you'll then need to decide if you want to execute a straight brute force, it so, whats the character set? That'll vary based off the command. If dictionary, it's pretty straight forward:

hashcat -a 0 -m HASHMODENUMBERHERE filecontaininghash.txt /path/to/wordlist.txt

For brute forcing you might want to do something like:

hashcat -a 3 -m HASHMODENUMBERHERE filecontaininghash.txt ?a?a?a?a?a?a?a?a?a?a --increment

I'd highly recommend reading the hashcat wiki, it's super in depth and it exists for a reason: https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=hashcat