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All Cyber Labs
Password Cracking

John the Ripper LabCrack password hashes hands-on in an isolated lab.

Practice John the Ripper online in a real cyber lab — crack Unix, Windows NTLM, ZIP, and KeePass hashes in a browser-streamed Kali environment. No setup, pay-as-you-go.

Overview

What is John the Ripper?

John the Ripper (JtR) is an open-source password security auditing and password recovery tool. It detects weak Unix passwords, supports hundreds of hash and cipher formats — DES, NTLM, MD5, SHA, bcrypt, KeePass, ZIP, Office documents — and is a staple of every penetration tester's offline credential-cracking workflow.

Inside the lab

Practising John the Ripper in a real cyber lab

John the Ripper is pre-installed on the Kali image in every DeepTech cyber lab. You dump hashes from a compromised target, copy them onto your Kali box, and crack them with built-in wordlists, rule mutations, or incremental brute force — all from a browser, no local CPU/GPU required.

Hands-on

What you'll practice

Hands-on exercises that build job-ready John the Ripper skills.

  • Dump and crack /etc/shadow hashes from a Linux target
  • Crack Windows SAM/NTLM hashes captured from a compromised host
  • Use rule-based mutations on rockyou.txt for realistic password lists
  • Crack KeePass database files and password-protected ZIPs
  • Compare JtR vs Hashcat workflows on the same hash corpus

Available in: Tier 2 — Kali VM, and Tier 3 — Multi-Machine Networks.

Questions, answered

John the Ripper lab FAQ

Do I need a GPU rig to crack hashes in these labs?

No. Lab exercises are designed around realistic hash counts that complete on the lab's CPU within the session. For heavier GPU-bound work, the Hashcat lab is the right pair.

Are the hashes from real systems?

The hashes are dumped from genuine vulnerable lab machines you are authorised to attack — never from production systems or real users.

Which hash formats can I practise against?

Unix DES/MD5/SHA, Linux shadow, Windows NTLM/LM, ZIP, RAR, Office docs, KeePass, SSH keys — the same formats JtR supports natively are available in lab exercises.

Start your John the Ripper lab now

Spin up a real, isolated environment in your browser and practice John the Ripper hands-on — no install, pay only for active time.