PYRIT(1)PYRITPYRIT(1)NAME
pyrit - A GPGPU-driven WPA/WPA2-PSK key cracker
SYNOPSIS
pyrit [options] command
DESCRIPTION
Pyrit exploits the computational power of many-core- and GPGPU-plat‐
forms to create massive databases, pre-computing part of the
WPA/WPA2-PSK authentication phase in a space-time tradeoff. It is a
powerful attack against one of the world's most used security-proto‐
cols.
This document tries to describe and explain all functions the command‐
line-client pyrit provides. One or more options may be given on the
commandline to customize a command. The exact behaviour of options
depends on the command.
At the time of this writing, cowpatty is not available in Debian. Ref‐
erences to cowpatty and its commands are nevertheless preserved for the
sake of completeness.
OPTIONS
Pyrit recognizes the following options:
-b BSSID
Specifies a BSSID. Can be used to restrict commands to certain
Access-Points.
-e ESSID
Specifies the ESSID. Commands usually refer to all ESSIDs in the
database when this option is omitted.
-i infile
Specifies a filename to read from; the special filename "-" can
be used for stdin. The file may be gzip-compressed in which case
its name must end in .gz for transparent decompression.
-o outfile
Specifies a filename to write to; the special filename "-" can
be used for stdout. Filenames that end in .gz cause pyrit to
gzip-compress the file on the fly.
-r capture-file
Specifies a packet-capture file in pcap format (possibly gzip-
compressed) or a device (e.g.: "wlan0") to capture from.
-u URL Specifies the URL of the storage-device in the form of
driver://username:password@host:port/database
Pyrit can use the filesystem, a remote Pyrit-Relay-Server and,
if the package python-sqlalchemy is installed, SQL-Databases as
storage. The driver file:// refers to Pyrit's own filesystem-
based storage, http:// connects to a Pyrit-Relay-Server and all
other URLs are passed directly to python-sqlalchemy, if avail‐
able. The default storage-URL can also be specified by the key
defaultstorage in pyrit's configuration file (see FILES below).
--all-handshakes
The commands attack_batch, attack_db, attack_cowpatty and
attack_passthrough automatically use the single handshake of
highest quality only. In some cases even this handshake may have
been wrongfully reconstructed from the captured data, rendering
the attack futile. In case more than one EAPOL-handshake is
reconstructed from the capture-file, the option --all-handshakes
may be used to attack all handshakes reconstructable from the
captured data. Exact behaviour of the commands affected by this
option is described below.
COMMANDS
analyze
Parse one or more packet-capture files (in pcap-format, possibly
gzip-compressed) given by the option -r and try to detect
Access-Points, Stations and EAPOL-handshakes. For example:
pyrit -r "test*.pcap" analyze
Pyrit shows a list of Access-Points, associated Stations and
EAPOL-handshakes that could be identified from the captured
data. Handshakes are shown ordered by their "quality":
Good: The handshake includes the challenge from the
Access-Point, the response from the Station and the
confirmation from the Access-Point.
Workable: The handshake includes the response from
the Station and the confirmation from the Access-
Point. The challenge was not captured.
Bad: The handshake includes the challenge from the
Access-Point and the response from the Station. The
confirmation was not captured.
Handshakes of the same quality are ordered by how
close the packets that make up the handshake are to
each other.
attack_batch
Attack an EAPOL-handshake found in the packet-capture
file(s) given by the option -r using the Pairwise Master
Keys and passwords stored in the database. The options -b
and -e can be used to specify the Access-Point to attack;
it is picked automatically if both options are omitted.
The password is written to the filename given by the
option -o if specified. For example:
pyrit -r test.pcap -e MyNetwork -b 00:de:ad:c0:de:00 \
-o MyNetworkPassword.txt attack_batch
Pairwise Master Keys that previously have been computed
and stored in the database are taken from there; all
other passwords are translated into their respective
Pairwise Master Keys and added to the database for later
re-use. ESSIDs are created automatically in the database
if necessary.
Pyrit works down the list of reconstructed EAPOL-hand‐
shakes in case the option --all-handshakes is supplied.
attack_cowpatty
Attack an EAPOL-handshake found in the packet-capture
file(s) given by the option -r using Pairwise Master Keys
from a cowpatty-like file (e.g. generated by ``genpmk''
from cowpatty, or export_cowpatty below) given by the
option -f. The options -b and -e can be used to specify
the Access-Point to attack; it is picked automatically if
both options are omitted. The password is written to the
filename given by the option -o if specified. The cow‐
patty-file may be gzip-compressed and must match the cho‐
sen ESSID. For example:
pyrit -r test.pcap -e MyOwnNetwork \
-i MyOwnNetwork.cow.gz -o - attack_cowpatty
Pyrit's own database is not touched by attack_cowpatty.
Pyrit attacks all EAPOL-handshakes at the same time if
the option --all-handshakes is supplied. This will reduce
throughput (e.g.: 33% throughout in case of three hand‐
shakes).
attack_db
Attack an EAPOL-handshake found in the packet-capture
file(s) given by the option -r using the Pairwise Master
Keys stored in the database. The options -b and -e can be
used to specify the Access-Point to attack; it is picked
automatically if both options are omitted. The password
is written to the filename given by the option -o if
specified. For example:
pyrit -r test.pcap -e MyOtherNetwork attack_db
Only Pairwise Master Keys that have been computed previ‐
ously and are stored in the database are used by
attack_db.
Pyrit works down the list of reconstructed EAPOL-hand‐
shakes in case the option --all-handshakes is supplied.
attack_passthrough
Attack an EAPOL-handshake found in the packet-capture
file(s) given by the option -r using the passwords read
from the file given by the option -i. The options -b and
-e can be used to specify the Access-Point to attack; it
is picked automatically if both options are omitted. The
password is written to the filename given by the option
-o if specified. For example:
pyrit -r test.pcap -b 00:de:ad:be:ef:00 \
-i words.txt attack_passthrough
This command circumvents Pyrit's database and should only
be used if storage-space is a problem (e.g. on LiveCDs).
You should consider using attack_batch otherwise.
Pyrit attacks all EAPOL-handshakes at the same time if
the option --all-handshakes is supplied.
batch
Start to translate all passwords in the database into
their respective Pairwise Master Keys and store the
results in the database. The option -e may be used to
restrict this command to a single ESSID; if it is omit‐
ted, all ESSIDs are processed one after the other in
undefined order. For example:
pyrit -e NETGEAR batch
The option -o can be used to specify a filename the
results should additionally be written to in cowpatty's
binary format. The option -e becomes mandatory and the
ESSID is automatically created in the database if neces‐
sary. Pairwise Master Keys that previously have been com‐
puted and stored in the database are exported from there
without further processing. Pyrit stops and exits if an
IOError is raised while writing to the specified file.
This makes it very convenient to pipe results directly to
other programs but also keep them for later use. For
example:
pyrit -e NETGEAR -o - batch | \
cowpatty -d - -r wpatestcapture.cap -s NETGEAR
benchmark
Determine the peak-performance of the available hardware
by computing dummy-results. For example:
pyrit benchmark
check_db
Unpack the entire database and check for errors like data
corruption or reference errors. This function does not
check the value of computed results (see verify). For
example:
pyrit check_db
create_essid
Add new ESSIDs to the database. A single ESSID may be
given by the option -e. Multiple ESSIDs can be created
by supplying a file (one per line) via the option -i. Re-
creating an existing ESSID does not result in an error.
For example:
pyrit -e NETGEAR create_essid
delete_essid
Delete the ESSID given by -e from the database. This
includes all results that may have been stored for that
particular ESSID. For example:
pyrit -e NETGEAR delete_essid
eval
Count all available passwords, all ESSIDs and their
respective results in the database. For example:
pyrit eval
export_passwords
Write all passwords that are currently stored in the
database to a new file given by -o. Passwords are termi‐
nated by a single newline-character ("\n"). Existing
files are overwritten without confirmation. For example:
pyrit -o myword.txt.gz export_passwords
export_cowpatty
Write all results for the ESSID given by -e to the file
given by -o in cowpatty's binary format. Existing files
are overwritten without confirmation. For example:
pyrit -o NETGEAR.cow -e NETGEAR export_cowpatty
export_hashdb
Write all results currently stored in the database to the
airolib-ng-database given by -o. The database is created
with a default table layout if the file does not yet
exist. The option -e can be used to limit the export to a
single ESSID. For example:
pyrit -o NETGEAR.db -e NETGEAR export_hashdb
import_passwords
Read the file given by -i and import one password per
line to the database. The passwords may contain all char‐
acters (including NULL-bytes) apart from the terminating
newline-character ("\n"). Passwords that are not suit‐
able for being used with WPA-/WPA2-PSK are ignored.
Pyrit's storage-implementation guarantees that all pass‐
words remain unique throughout the entire database. For
example:
pyrit -i dirty_words.txt import_passwords
import_unique_passwords
Read the file given by -i and import one password per
line to the database. The passwords may contain all char‐
acters (including NULL-bytes) apart from the terminating
newline-character ("\n"). Passwords that are not suitable
for being used with WPA-/WPA2-PSK are ignored. This com‐
mand does not check if there are duplicate passwords
within the file or between the file and the database; it
should be used with caution to prevent the database from
getting poisoned with duplicated passwords. This command
however can be much faster than import_passwords. For
example:
pyrit -i dirty_words.txt import_unique_passwords
list_cores
Show a list of all available hardware modules Pyrit cur‐
rently uses. For example:
pyrit list_cores
list_essids
Show a list of all ESSIDs currently stored in the data‐
base. This function is faster than eval in case you don't
need to know the number of computed results. For example:
pyrit list_essids
passthrough
Read passwords from the file given by -i and compute
their Pairwise Master Keys for the ESSID given by -e. The
results are written to the file specified by -o in cow‐
patty's binary format and are not stored in the database
for later use. This command therefor circumvents the
entire database and should only be used if storage-space
is a problem (e.g. when using Pyrit on a LiveCD). The
batch-command provides exactly the same functionality as
passthrough but can give much better performance as
results may be read from the database instead of recom‐
puting them. For example:
pyrit -i dirty_words.txt.gz -e NETGEAR \
-o - passthrough | cowpatty -d - \
-r wpatestcapture.cap -s NETGEAR
relay
Start a server to relay another storage device via XML-
RPC; other Pyrit-clients can use the server as storage-
device. This allows one to have network-based access to
storage source that don't provide network-access on their
own (like file:// and sqlite://) or hide a SQL-database
behind a firewall and let multiple clients access that
database only via Pyrit's RPC-interface. The TCP-port
17934 must be open for this function to work. For exam‐
ple, on the server (where the database is):
pyrit -u sqlite://var/local/pyrit.db relay
and the client (where the big GPU is):
pyrit -u http://192.168.0.100:17934 batch
selftest
Run an extensive selftest for about 60 seconds. This test
includes the entire scheduling-mechanism and all cores
that are listed by list_cores. You can use this function
to detect broken hardware-modules or malicious network-
clients. For example:
pyrit selftest
serve
Start a server that provides access to the local comput‐
ing hardware to help other Pyrit clients. The server's
IP-address should be added to the client's configuration
file (see FILES) as a space-separated list under
known_clients. The client's rpc_server-setting must also
be set to 'true'. The TCP- and UDP-Port 17935 must be
accessible. For example, on the server (where the GPU
is):
pyrit serve
and on the client (the server's IP-address has been added
to known_clients and rpc_server is set to 'true'):
pyrit -r test.pcap -b 00:de:ad:be:ef:00 \
-i words.txt attack_passthrough
strip
Parse one or more packet-capture files given by the
option -r, extract only packets that are necessary for
EAPOL-handshake detection and write a new dump to the
filename given by the option -o. The options -e and -b
can be used to filter certain Access-Points. For example:
pyrit -r "large_dumps_*.pcap" -e MyNetwork \
-o tiny_compressed_dump_MyNetwork.dump.gz strip
stripLive
Parse a packet-capture file given by the option -r,
extract only packets that are necessary for EAPOL-hand‐
shake detection and write a new dump to the file given by
the option -o. This command differs from strip as the
capture-file can be any character device including sock‐
ets and other pseudo-files that look like files in pcap-
format. stripLive writes relevant packets to the new file
given by -o as they arrive instead of trying to read the
entire capture-file first.
pyrit -r /temp/kismet_dump -o small_dump.pcap stripLive
verify
Randomly pick 10% of the results stored in the database
and verify their value by recomputation. You need this
function if you suspect broken hardware or malicious net‐
work-clients. For example:
pyrit -e NETGEAR verify
EXIT STATUS
If command succeeds, pyrit's process exit status is set to 0; otherwise
it is set to 1 and (usually) an error message or a python-traceback is
written to stderr. The following commands also indicate an error condi‐
tion in certain cases:
analyze: Not at least one valid EAPOL-handshake could
be detected.
attack_passthrough, attack_batch, attack_db and
attack_cowpatty: The password could not be found.
verify At least one workunit contained invalid results.
check_db Errors in the database were found (and possi‐
bly fixed).
FILES
~/.pyrit/config
The pyrit configuration file. You can find a documented example
in /usr/share/doc/pyrit/examples/config.example.
NOTES
The author does not encourage or support using pyrit for the infringe‐
ment of people's communication-privacy. The exploration and realization
of the technology discussed here motivate as a purpose of their own;
this is documented by the open development, strictly sourcecode-based
distribution and 'copyleft'-licensing.
AUTHOR
pyrit was written by Lukas Lueg <lukas.lueg@gmail.com>.
This manual page was written by Christian Kastner <ckk@debian.org> for
the Debian project (but may be used by others).
pyrit 2011-03-28 PYRIT(1)