Hydra

Hydra (also known as THC-Hydra) is a popular and powerful password-cracking tool designed to perform brute-force attacks on various network protocols and services. It is commonly used by penetration testers and security researchers to test the strength of passwords in systems with services that rely on authentication, like SSH, FTP, HTTP, and many others.

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Installation

sudo apt install hydra

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Example Usage

hydra [-l username | -L username_file] [-p password | -P password_file] [-C combo_file] -m module [service://target[:port][/options]]

• -l username or -L username_file: Single username or file with usernames.
• -p password or -P password_file: Single password or file with passwords.
• -C combo_file: File with username:password pairs.
• -m module: Specify a specific module for the service (if needed).
• service://target[:port][/options]: Protocol, target IP/hostname, optional port, and additional options.

Cheat sheet

Service	Command Example
FTP	hydra -l admin -P password.txt ftp://10.10.10.10
SSH	hydra -l admin -P password.txt ssh://10.10.10.10
HTTP GET	hydra -l admin -P password.txt http-get://10.10.10.10/login
HTTP POST	hydra -l admin -P password.txt 10.10.10.10 http-post-form "/login.php:user=^USER^&pass=^PASS^:F=incorrect"
HTTP Basic Auth	hydra -l admin -P password.txt 10.10.10.10 http-get /
RDP	hydra -l admin -P password.txt rdp://10.10.10.10
SMB	hydra -L users.txt -P password.txt smb://10.10.10.10
MySQL	hydra -L users.txt -P password.txt mysql://10.10.10.10
Telnet	hydra -l admin -P password.txt telnet://10.10.10.10
POP3	hydra -l admin -P password.txt pop3://10.10.10.10
SMTP	hydra -L users.txt -P password.txt smtp://10.10.10.10

Some Flags

Flag	Description	Example
-s PORT	Specify a non-default port for the service.	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -s 8080 ssh://10.10.10.10
-t TASKS	Number of parallel connections per target (default: 16).	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -t 32 ftp://10.10.10.10
-T TASKS	Number of overall parallel connections when attacking multiple targets with -M.	hydra -L users.txt -P password.txt -M targets.txt -T 100 ssh
-R	Resume a previous session (useful after an interruption).	hydra -R
-I	Ignore an existing restore file and start fresh.	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -I ssh://10.10.10.10
-M FILE	File containing a list of targets, one per line.	hydra -L users.txt -P password.txt -M targets.txt ssh
-o FILE	Output the results to a file instead of printing to stdout.	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -o results.txt ftp://10.10.10.10
-f / -F	Stop after finding the first valid credential (-f per host, -F globally for all targets).	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -f ssh://10.10.10.10
-c TIME	Wait time for login attempts across all threads (enforces -t 1).	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -c 5 ssh://10.10.10.10
-v / -V	Verbose modes: -v shows ongoing attempts, -V shows username/password for each attempt.	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -v ssh://10.10.10.10
-q	Suppress connection error messages in output.	hydra -l admin -P password.txt -q ssh://10.10.10.10