# hashcat

World's fastest and most advanced password recovery utility

Repository: https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/hashcat
Homepage: https://hashcat.net/hashcat/
Language: C
License Family: other
Topics: hashcat, password, cracking, gpgpu, opencl, c, hashes, cuda
Last push: 2026-08-26T19:41:40+00:00
Link (homepage): https://hashcat.net/hashcat/
Link (site_page): https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=frequently_asked_questions

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 80/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 44, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3925, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 375, "gap_med": 5, "n_releases_24m": 4}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 26631, forks 3539 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:47.039490+00:00)

## What it is
Hashcat is the world's fastest and most advanced password recovery utility, supporting over 300 highly-optimized hashing algorithms across five attack modes. It runs on CPUs, GPUs, and other OpenCL/CUDA-capable hardware on Linux, Windows, and macOS, with support for distributed cracking.

## Use cases
- crack forgotten password hashes from a database dump
- recover a lost WiFi or archive password from its hash
- audit password strength during a penetration test
- benchmark GPU performance across hashing algorithms
- run distributed password cracking across multiple machines
- identify and crack an unknown hash type
- test dictionary and mask attacks against NTLM hashes

## When to choose
- you need maximum cracking speed using GPU acceleration
- you need to support a very wide range of hash types (450+)
- you want rule-based, mask-based, or distributed attack modes
- you need cross-platform support on Linux, Windows, and macOS

## When to avoid
- you only need to crack a single simple hash occasionally without GPU hardware
- you need a graphical interface rather than a command-line tool
- you want to crack encrypted files directly rather than hashes
- your GPU drivers or OpenCL/CUDA runtimes are not available

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: security, cryptography, gpu-computing, cli, benchmarking
- domain: security, penetration-testing, gpu-computing
- platform: windows, cli, cross-platform
- tags: password-cracking, hash-recovery, opencl, cuda, gpu-accelerated, penetration-testing, dictionary-attack, brute-force, cryptography, command-line, linux, macos, gpu

## Member repositories
- hashcat/hashcat (main) score 80
- hashcat/hashcat-legacy (mirror) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:47.039490+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:55:50.717007+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:47.039490+00:00, sha 8c5ecfebda43)
  - homepage: https://hashcat.net/hashcat/ (fetched 2026-08-29T07:52:17.156722+00:00, sha cb8a94817611)
  - site_page: https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=frequently_asked_questions (fetched 2026-08-29T07:52:17.160082+00:00, sha a326703b4777)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.