Lion Cipher Lab
Test your own password strength by cracking your own hashes
- Penetration Testing / Red Team
- Beginner
- ~40 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Everyone has been told to use strong passwords, but told is not shown. When you watch a cracking tool recover your weak test password in under a second and then grind forever against a long passphrase without ever getting it, the advice stops being a rule you follow grudgingly and becomes a thing you understand. That single demonstration is why length plus a password manager is the answer, and it is the same technique a real attacker uses against a stolen password database, which is exactly why storing passwords well and choosing them well both matter.
What you'll learn
- password strength
- hashing
- John the Ripper
- hashcat
- dictionary attacks
- why length beats complexity
- password managers
Steps in this lab
- Read this first: only ever crack hashes you made yourself
- What you are actually about to prove
- Get a cracking tool installed
- Create hashes of YOUR OWN test passwords
- Crack the weak one and watch it fall in seconds
- Now attack the passphrase — and watch it refuse to fall
- Read the result: length wins, and a manager makes it free
- What to carry out of this lab