Testing the Effects of Concurrency on Dictionary Attacks

Overview

This project benchmarks and analyzes the impact of concurrency on dictionary-based password cracking. By comparing sequential and multi-threaded approaches across multiple hash algorithms (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512), the project highlights performance differences, speedup, and efficiency when using 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 threads.

Features

• Sequential vs. Parallel Cracking: Measures password cracking time using both single-threaded and multi-threaded approaches
• Multi-Hash Support: Tests MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, and SHA-512 hash algorithms
• Thread Scaling Analysis: Compares using 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 threads to evaluate speedup and efficiency
• Randomized Testing: Selects passwords randomly from a wordlist (I used rockyou.txt)
• Performance Metrics: Outputs execution times, speedup factors, and efficiency calculations for each thread count

Technology Stack

• C++: Used for cracking logic and multithreading
• Python: Used to automate experiments, averages results, and generates performance plots
• OpenSSL: Used for cryptographic functions for MD5 and SHA hashing