Passwords are not a formality

I recently came across an encrypted password NOT where it should be.  The individuals involved probably didn’t realize what they had done, and it might be fixable by relocating and properly protecting the file containing this password (as long as the password has not been guessed, or the individuals involved change the password).  However, the mindset will still remain.

Anyone that puts an important file with an encrypted password on more than a dozen computers, with permissions of the file being world-readable, doesn’t really understand the ramifications involved.

Since then, I have been trying to “crack” the password through regular means.  Given their usage pattern, I’m fairly certain the password is 8 characters long, at least one capital letter, one number, and one special character.  Sadly, only that much information probably won’t be enough for me to crack it without throwing more compute power at it.  The tough part is that its a salted hash, so I can’t really use Rainbow Tables, and I’ve already tried dictionary attacks with Webster’s Dictionary.  So, I’ve resorted to brute-force automated guessing.  JTR seems pretty good at this, but even so it will probably take months to obtain the plaintext password.  It has been running for 11+ days so far.

The encrypted password in question is: {SSHA}KZhA0wzX4AThn9CkxBgYDmmy42pNY9ME

Salted SHA-1, of course.  If you know encryption algorithms, you already know what this is likely used for, but I won’t give that away.  I won’t tell you what its used for, or who it belongs to, or what you might do with it once you’ve cracked it, suffice to say the plaintext password in the wrong hands could cause some damage.

If you know of a quick way to crack such a password, other than what I’ve tried so far, drop me a line.