[DESCRIPTION]

Maskprocessor is a fast word list generator. It enumerates all combinations
from a given user-defined keyspace and outputs the results. Since it supports
different alphabets (which also can be combined) at different positions in the
generation template ('mask'), this approach allows a more fine-tunable
generation of candidates than using 'naive' brute force enumeration of words.
Masks are defined using the description also used in the Hashcat password
recovery utility.


[MASKS]

For each position of the generated password candidates we need to configure a placeholder. If a password we want to crack has the length 8, our mask must consist of 8 placeholders.
A mask is a simple string that configures the keyspace of the password candidate engine using placeholders. A placeholder can be either a custom charset variable, a built-in charset variable or a static letter. A variable is indicated by the ? letter followed by one of the built-in charset (l, u, d, s, a) or one of the custom charset variable names (1, 2, 3, 4). A static letter is not indicated by a letter. An exception is if we want the static letter ? itself, which must be written as ??.

[BUILTIN CHARSETS]

?l = abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, ?u = ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ,
?d = 0123456789, ?s = (space)!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~,
?a = ?l?u?d?s, ?b = 0x00-0xff

[CUSTOM CHARSETS]

There are four command line parameters to configure four custom charsets:
--custom-charset1=CS, --custom-charset2=CS,  --custom-charset3=CS, --custom-charset4=CS.

These command line parameters have four analogous shortcuts called -1, -2, -3 and -4. You can specify the chars directly on the command line.

[PASSWORD LENGTH INCREMENT]

A Mask attack is always specific to a password length. For example, if we use the mask ”?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l” we can only crack a password of the length 8. But if the password we try to crack has the length 7 we will not find it. That is why we have to repeat the attack several times, each time with one placeholder added to the mask. This is transparently automated by using the '--increment' flag.

?l -> ?l?l -> ?l?l?l -> ?l?l?l?l -> ?l?l?l?l?l -> ?l?l?l?l?l?l -> ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l -> ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l

[REPORTING BUGS]

Please report bugs upstream to the maskprocessor issue tracker on GitHub:
https://github.com/hashcat/maskprocessor/issues

[COPYRIGHT]

This tool is developed and maintained by Jens Steube under the MIT License.
