Tech Solvency / pub / bin / mdxfind

What is MDXfind?

MDXfind is a command-line hash-cracking tool for security researchers, pen testers, etc.

MDXfind "runs large numbers of unsolved hashes, using many algorithms, against large numbers of plaintext words, very quickly" (Waffle, primary author).

MDXfind is somewhat different from other hash-cracking software (see below). The learning curve may be a little steep at first, but if you have a pile of hashes of unknown type, or a hundred million hashes that you need to pare down quickly for other attacks ... MDXfind may be the perfect tool for the job.

While MDXfind is CPU based (which may seem odd in the era of GPU cracking), don't worry -- its core features work nicely on CPU!

How MDXfind is different

Feature differences

• Mixed hash types: MDXfind will crack many different hash types simultaneously. Single target hashlists with many different hash types are supported.
• Arbitrary iteration: MDXfind can try arbitrary numbers of iteration counts of most supported algorithms - in a single job (effectively millions of end-result algorithms).
• Scale: MDXfind can efficiently handle very large hashlists (100M+) and wordlists.
• Long plaintext support: MDXfind can handle plaintexts of lengths up to 40,960 bytes.
• Truncated and rotated hashes: MDXfind cracks rotated and truncated hashes (transformations of the hash itself), as long as at least 8 bytes of a hash match.
• Hash generation: MDXfind can also generate any supported hashes and iteration counts (using -z).
• Regex-based hash-type specification: You can use regular expressions to match just specific hash types to search for.
• Hash-type labels: All output founds are prefixed with a hash type ID. This means that, unlike some other cracking tools, it is always clear which algorithm was detected for each hash.

Operational differences

• Unlike some other cracking tools, output goes solely to stdout. Use tee -a or equivalent to append to a results file of your choice.
• MDXfind does not provide a real-time estimate of ongoing cracking hashrate on its status line. (It does provide other status information - see Output and tuning below), and does provide an approximate hashrate once a run is completed. As of 1.133, ongoing rate of operation is shown.
• MDXfind does not automatically compare a potfile with a target file on startup and skip any existing founds. Instead, periodically remove found hashes from your target file using the included companion mdsplit utility (more on that later).
• MDXfind is currently only supported on CPU (no GPU support).

Other MDXfind features

• Multi-platform: ARMv6, ARMv7, ARMv8, FreeBSD+, Linux (32/64), macOS/OS x (x86, M1), POWER8, and Windows (32/64)
• Multi-algorithm: tries 766 different core algorithm combinations/variants as observed in the wild - in parallel in a single job, using Judy arrays
• Process lists of hashes with mixed algorithm types (output indicates the algorithm; use mdsplit to separate out into per-algorithm lists)
• Include and exclude hash types by name, using regex
• Skip N words from beginning of a wordlist (can be used for simple distribution of work)
• Automate real-world transformations: email address munging, Unicode expansion, HTML escapes
• Read salts, usernames, suffixes, and/or rules from external files
• Configure arbitrary CPU thread count
• Apply multiple rules files (either in series or as dot-product)
• Recurse wordlist directories
• Take input from stdin

When to use MDXfind

• When you have a mix of hash types
• When working with unknown hash types
• When you have many words to try on many hashes
• To quickly cull common plains from a very large hashlist
• On GPU-unfriendly algorithms
• To quickly process many previous hashlists - with new candidate plaintexts, when new algorithms appear, with new rules, etc.

When not to use MDXfind

• For mask and brute-force attacks on GPU-friendly algorithms
• For distributed hash clusters (hashtopolis, etc do not support it ... yet)

What MDXfind is not

• A few vendors on VirusTotal sometimes mis-detect MDXFind as a coin miner, due to its hashing features.

Requirements

MDXfind is distributed as standalone binaries for the command line. There is no installer, and there is no GUI.

MDXfind should work "out of the box" on: Windows 32/64, Linux (x86 32/64, ARM6/7/8, and POWER8), FreeBSD 64, macOS (Intel or M), and Linux POWER8. See file(1) output for minimum kernel versions.

MDXfind uses the following libraries. As of version 1.130, these are included directly (no dependencies required).

• Judy (for dynamic arrays)
• Mhash (for hashing)
• libpcre 8.x (for regular expressions)

If you have an update to these requirements, let me know.

Help and examples

Simple example usage:

This example shows a basic mdxfind run, followed by using mdsplit to remove all discovered solutions from the target.

Note: on the Windows command line, use double quotes instead of single quotes around the regex.

$ cat example-hashes.txt
5a22e6c339c96c9c0513a46e44c39683
5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8
5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99
696d29e0940a4957748fe3fc9efd22a3
7b3b4de00794a247cf8df8e6fbfe19bf
8846f7eaee8fb117ad06bdd830b7586c

$ cat example-wordlist.dict
password

# Run the attack. All three requested hash types 
# are attempted in a single attack run.
$ mdxfind -h '^(SHA1|MD5|NTLM)$' \
   -i 3 -f example-hashes.txt example-wordlist.dict \
   | tee -a example-found.res

Iterations set to 3
Working on hash types: MD5 SHA1 NTLM
Took 0.00 seconds to read hashes
Searching through 6 unique hex hashes from example-hashes.txt
Maximum hash chain depth is 1
Minimum hash length is 32 characters
Using 2 cores

Done - 2 threads caught
1 lines processed in 0 seconds
1.00 lines per second
0.00 seconds hashing, 11 total hash calculations
0.01M hashes per second (approx)
1 total files
1 MD5x01 hashes found
1 MD5x02 hashes found
1 MD5x03 hashes found
1 SHA1x01 hashes found
1 NTLMx01 hashes found
5 Total hashes found
MD5x01 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99:password
MD5x02 696d29e0940a4957748fe3fc9efd22a3:password
MD5x03 5a22e6c339c96c9c0513a46e44c39683:password
SHA1x01 5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8:password
NTLMx01 8846f7eaee8fb117ad06bdd830b7586c:password

$ cat example-found.res
MD5x01 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99:password
MD5x02 696d29e0940a4957748fe3fc9efd22a3:password
MD5x03 5a22e6c339c96c9c0513a46e44c39683:password
SHA1x01 5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8:password
NTLMx01 8846f7eaee8fb117ad06bdd830b7586c:password

# Remove all found hashes from our target file, 
# distributing hash:found pairs into separate files
# per algorithm.
# This can be done iteratively (new results will append).

# Check how big the target hashfile is.
$ wc -l example-hashes.txt
6 example-hashes.txt
# Make a backup - we're about to change it.
$ cp -p example-hashes.txt example-hashes.txt.orig

# Split the founds per type; remove hashes from target.
$ mdsplit -f example-found.res example-hashes.txt
5 result lines processed, 5 types found
MD5x01 MD5x02 MD5x03 NTLMx01 SHA1x01
example-hashes.txt had 5 hits

Total 5 hashes found

# Check our split files.
$ head -n 1 example-hashes.*x0*
==> example-hashes.MD5x01 <==
5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99:password

==> example-hashes.MD5x02 <==
696d29e0940a4957748fe3fc9efd22a3:password

==> example-hashes.MD5x03 <==
5a22e6c339c96c9c0513a46e44c39683:password

==> example-hashes.NTLMx01 <==
8846f7eaee8fb117ad06bdd830b7586c:password

==> example-hashes.SHA1x01 <==
5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8:password

# The found hashes have been removed from the target.
$ wc -l example-hashes.txt*
1 example-hashes.txt
5 example-hashes.txt.orig

Slightly more advanced example

(adapted from @winxp5421's talk, with each line explicated):

# Try all unsalted hash types, up to five iterations.
$ mdxfind -h ALL -h '!salt,!user,!crypt' -i 5 \
    -f unknown.txt /dict/top-10k-pass.dict \
    | tee -a out.res

   # Search every algorithm, except ...
   -h ALL

   # ... skip salted explicit (!salt), implicit (!crypt)
   -h '!salt,!user,!crypt'

   # Iterate 1 to 5 times, inclusive.
   -i 5

   # Specify target hashlist.
   -f unknown.txt

   # Specify wordlist (input dictionary).
   /dict/top-10k.pass.dict

   # Append to outfile (where results go).
   | tee -a out.res

(Using  '| tee -a out.res'   lets you watch the output; use  ' > out.res'  instead if you won't want to watch, or tee isn't available on your system.)

Specifying hash types

To tell MDXfind which hash types you want to try, you use use regular expressions that matches the hash types. Case-insensitivity is always implied.

To see the list of available hash types, run MDXfind with just -h with no other parameters.

At startup, you can see which hash types were selected (the "Working on hash types:" line). You can use this to check whether your regex is doing what you're expecting.

Tip: if you know you only need one or more specific hash types, your attack will be much faster if you only specify just the relevant types.

Examples:

Note: on the Windows command line, use double quotes instead of single quotes around the regex.

# Match only a single hash type.
$ mdxfind -h '^MD5$' [...]

# Match all hash types beginning with MD5.
# (usually means MD5 was the last step in the algorithm)
# Note the difference from above - no '$' at the end.
$ mdxfind -h '^MD5' [...]

# Only match these three specific hash types.
$ mdxfind -h '^(SHA1|MD5|NTLM)$' [...]

# Match all hash types beginning with these strings.
# Again, note the missing '$'.
$ mdxfind -h '^(SHA1|MD5|NTLM)' [...]

# Match all hash types *except* any containing these string..
# Exclamation points may have special meaning in your shell,
# so quoting may be necessary.
mdxfind -h ALL -h '!salt,!user,!crypt,!revp,!leet' [...]

As of version 1.133, the undocumented -m flag, which lets you specify hash types using hashcat mode IDs (one or more separated by commas) now also supported a -m eNN syntax, which lets you specify an mdxfind hash type using its position in -h (1 for MD5, etc.)

Threading

By default, MDXfind will politely but thoroughly use all available cores/threads. To override this, you can use -t [N] (where N is the number of threads to use).

Generating hashes with -z

You can use mdxfind's -z flag to generate arbitrary hashes:

# Use NUL instead of /dev/null on Windows
$ echo password | mdxfind -h "^MD5$" -z -f /dev/null -i 5 stdin 2>/dev/null
MD5x01 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99:password
MD5x02 696d29e0940a4957748fe3fc9efd22a3:password
MD5x03 5a22e6c339c96c9c0513a46e44c39683:password
MD5x04 e777a29bee9227c8a6a86e0bad61fc40:password
MD5x05 7b3b4de00794a247cf8df8e6fbfe19bf:password

Expanded examples:

• first 10000 rounds of MD5 of 'password'
• first 5 iterations of 'password' in most supported unsalted algorithms

Generating sequences of bytes with $TESTVEC

$TESTVEC[bytes x count] is a way to create patterns up to 2,000,000 bytes as a candidate for any algorithm. Typically, these are used as ways to create known patterns to test algorithms.

$TESTVEC accepts one or more byte, and repeats them the specified number of times, to a maximum size of 2,000,000 bytes (bytes x repetition size).

Such sequences are also part of the FIPS 140-2 standard:

A file containing the binary-coded form of the ASCII string which consists of 1,000,000 repetitions of the character "a" results in a SHA-1 message digest of 34aa973c d4c4daa4 f61eeb2b dbad2731 6534016f.

# Simple example - a single NUL byte:
$ echo '$TESTVEC[00 x 1]' \
  | mdxfind -h ^sha1$ -z -f /dev/null stdin 2>/dev/null
SHA1x01 5ba93c9db0cff93f52b521d7420e43f6eda2784f:$TESTVEC[00 x 1]

# ... which is equivalent to:
$ echo -n '\x00' | xxd -p -r | sha1sum
5ba93c9db0cff93f52b521d7420e43f6eda2784f  -

# The classic FIPS example - byte \x61, repeated 1 million times.
$ echo '$TESTVEC[61 x 1000000]' \
  | mdxfind -h ^sha1$ -z -f /dev/null stdin 2>/dev/null
SHA1x01 34aa973cd4c4daa4f61eeb2bdbad27316534016f:$TESTVEC[61 x 1000000]

$TESTVEC was introduced in MDXfind 1.16 in May 2014.

Output and tuning

Cracking output goes straight to stdout (unless redirected). Each hash:solution pair is prefixed with the discovered hash type and iteration (x99 syntax):

MD5x01 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99:password
MD5x02 696d29e0940a4957748fe3fc9efd22a3:password
MD5x03 5a22e6c339c96c9c0513a46e44c39683:password
SHA1x01 5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8:password
NTLMx01 8846f7eaee8fb117ad06bdd830b7586c:password

MDXfind will periodically show a status / progress "comfort message" line (every 15 seconds). This status output goes to stderr, so if you are directing output somewhere else, the status line will be the only thing you see while the attack is in progress:

Working on mybigwordlist w=62, line 2771, Found=2809, 0.54Mh/s, 184.73c/s
Working on mybigwordlist w=62, line 5542, Found=8532, 0.74Mh/s, 184.73c/s

H/s is hash operations per second (often more than one in each attempt of a hashtype)

c/s is candidates per second (e.g., bcrypt attempts per second)

Note that initial values may take time to populate (the first job has to complete).

Status output and tuning commentary, from Waffle:

• The w= argument shows how "busy" mdxfind is. If you have a lot of cores, this number can be very high. It is actually the number of work units waiting in the queue to be processed, where each work unit is an algorithm and block of lines to be processed. If you are using a simple algorithm, like MD5, most times MDXfind will out-pace the speed of your disk, and w= will be a very low number. Doing a "hard" algorithm like MD5DSALT, or BCRYPT for example, this number will be high, meaning that your hard drive is able to produce data faster than the algorithms can consume it.
• "line" is the line number in the current file. It's not random - it reads a "memory chunk" of data from the file, then breaks that into lines (so there will be a lot of lines if each line is a very short password, and there will be fewer lines if each line is a long password). It increases as block of lines is run through all of the algorithms specified (might be just one algorithm, or you might have access them all).Take the line number you see, and back up a few thousand (just for good measure, as there's no way to know exactly which line it was on as the comfort messages update about every 15 seconds, and mdxfind can process millions per second), and use that in the -w for the next run.
• Found shows the ongoing count of founds.

mdsplit - mdxfind's companion tool

The purpose of mdsplit is to remove hashes with solutions from a target hashlist, using MDXfind result files (traditionally named with a .res extension) as a reference, separating them into per-hashtype files with the hash type as the files extension.

Typical usage examples:

# Remove all hashes found in foo.res from unsolved.hashes.txt.
mdsplit -f foo.res unsolved-hashes.txt

# Do the same for multiple files, from stdin.
cat foo.res bar.res | mdsplit unsolved-hashes.txt

# Run a cracking job, automatically sending mdxfind output to mdsplit.
cat unfound-hashset*.txt | mdxfind -i 3 /tmp/words | mdsplit *.txt

If you are working with a results file that does not contain hash-type prefixes (such as a potfile from hashcat or john), you can use the -t flag to specify a default hash type. (Of course, if your potfile contains more than one "silent" hash type, this won't work.)

When working with large hashlists (millions+), other tools like John the Ripper and hashcat can take non-trivial time to process the hashlist at each startup. (When doing many small attacks, this can sometimes mean that the startup time is higher than the attack time!). So a very common workflow is to use mdxfind to find a lot of hashes early, and then mdsplit to remove the found hashes from your target hashlist. This can reduce your target to a manageable size for other tools. For hashcat users, this is similar to hashcat's --remove, but after the fact.

Full usage output

Changelog

Here is the full known changelog (text file) for both mdxfind and mdsplit.

Metadata

The upstream distribution from Waffle just contains binaries. I generate some useful metadata and maintain a changelog here, but my metadata is not in the distribution zipfile.

• MDXfind usage
• MDXfind algorithms list - see the Hash Types Rosetta Stone for definitions of some (the naming conventions can be confusing)
• MDXfind binary types (file output)
• checksums: MD5, SHA256
• Changelog

There is also a little bit of metadata provided to me directly by Waffle (but isn't part of the zipfile):

• algo_defs.txt - this is the list of all hashtypes, with an ID number assigned by the order they were added. Can be used with -m eNNN
• maphashcat.txt - maps the above hashtype ID number to the hashcat equivalent mode ID

References

Talks

• Introductory video from @winxp5421 (of the CynoSure Prime cracking team)
• Will Hunt's Password Cracking 101+1: Part 14 - Unknown hash cracking with mdxfind

Forum posts

Posts with more info and examples:

(Moved/broken references, necromancy TBD - see Wayback Machine in the meantime:)
Google search for MDXfind on Hashkiller forums | usage from hashes.org forums | thread 1 | thread 2 | thread 3

Other references

• 0xln's MDXfind Bible - a nice, general 'getting started' howto for MDXfind, step by step, with a couple of different use cases. (local raw mirror)
• cyclone's alternate mirror: cyclone-github/mdxfind

See also

• Hash Types Rosetta Stone - spreadsheet of equivalent hash type identifiers across multiple cracking suites, maintained by the cracking community. Includes John the Ripper, hashcat, and MDXfind identifiers.
• rling - remove duplicates (and optionally sort), very quickly, and with a variety of memory/speed/storage trade-off options. Also from Waffle and team. See this thread for theory and examples.
  Includes handy utilities for hashing work:
  • dedupe - best-effort "on the fly" dedupe (for pipes)
  • getpass - smart extraction of founds from result/pot files
  • rehex - HEXify and de-HEXify plains based on a matrix of matching bytes
  • splitlen - split input into different files based on record length
• rlite - a lightweight version of rling, also from CynoSure Prime
• Managing unique wordlists for password cracking - leveraging rlite

Download

NOTE: MDXfind is distributed as standalone binaries for the command line. There is no installer, and there is no GUI.

In the directory below, you will see two zipfiles:

• mdxfind-X.XXX.zip - This is the latest release zipfile. It has everything you need to get started. It contains both mdxfind and mdsplit binaries, for a variety of platforms (with filenames per platform that should be self-explanatory). If you're not sure which one you need, it's this one.
• mdxfind-latest.zip - This is a permanent, predictable filename. It is always symlinked to the latest release-specific zipfile, to support automated downloads (for Docker / Vast / etc.)

Note:

• If an executable filename has no extension, the file is a Linux x86 binary (32- or 64-bit as shown).
• Files with an asterisked description are "value-add" files added by me, downstream from Waffle's distribution zipfile.
• Separate static binaries are no longer needed as of version 1.130. Symlinks are provided for now (to minimize impact to workflows), but are deprecated and will be removed in the future.
• Since mdsplit changes less often than mdxfind, mdsplit files may be older than mdxfind files. This is normal.

Where's the source?

MDXfind is not currently open source (no public GitHub, etc.), but it is free to use.

How is MDXfind licensed?

Permission is granted to use, copy, share, and redistribute this software for non-commercial purposes only.

Modifications and derivative works are allowed, provided they are not used or distributed for commercial benefit.

Redistribution of unmodified copies is permitted only for non-commercial purposes.

Any commercial use, sale, or distribution for profit is strictly prohibited.

 Name                    Last modified      Size  Description
 Parent Directory                             -   
 archive/                2025-08-27 02:49    -   retired/older files
 example-wordlist.dict   2025-08-18 17:34    9   Example wordlist*
 example-hashes.txt      2025-08-18 18:49  206   Example hashes*
 example-found.res       2025-08-18 22:00  255   Example cracking results*
 CHECKSUMS.MD5.txt       2025-11-10 16:38  1.2K  MD5 checksums*
 CHECKSUMS.SHA256.txt    2025-11-10 16:38  2.1K  SHA256 checksums*
 mdsplit-old.txt         2019-09-01 22:33  2.5K  old Perl version (ref)
 usage.txt               2025-11-10 16:38  2.8K  mdxfind/mdsplit usage*
 file-output.txt         2025-11-10 16:38  4.1K  file(1) binary details*
 maphashcat.txt          2025-08-26 00:27  8.6K  hashcat mode -> algo map**
 algorithms.txt          2025-11-10 16:38   10K  supported hash types*
 CHANGES.txt             2025-11-11 01:05   15K  Changelog*
 algo_defs.txt           2025-08-26 00:27   22K  algo name -> ID map**
 mdsplit.arm6            2025-09-12 14:03   74K  e.g. Pi v1 x32
 mdsplit.arm7            2025-09-12 14:03   74K  e.g. Pi early 2 B x32
 top-10k-pass.dict       2025-08-18 22:46   80K  HashMob's top10k list*
 mdsplit-32.exe          2025-09-12 14:16   92K  (32-bit)
 mdsplit-32              2025-09-12 14:15   94K  (32-bit)
 mdsplit.arm8            2025-09-12 14:14  131K  e.g. Pi 3+ x64
 mdsplit.freebsd         2025-09-12 14:09  158K  
 mdsplit                 2025-09-12 14:09  159K  
 mdsplit.static          2025-09-12 14:09  159K  DEPRECATED - use mdsplit
 mdsplit.exe             2025-09-12 14:16  166K  
 mdsplit.power8          2025-09-12 14:07  259K  
 mdsplit.mac             2025-10-24 14:52  342K  
 mdsplit.macm1           2025-10-24 14:52  342K  DEPRECATED - use mdsplit.mac (universal)
 mdxfind.arm8            2025-09-12 14:09  2.1M  e.g. Pi 3+ x64
 mdxfind.arm6            2025-11-10 16:38  2.4M  e.g. Pi v1 x32
 mdxfind.arm7            2025-11-10 16:32  2.5M  e.g. Pi early 2 B x32
 mdxfind.power8          2025-11-10 17:40  3.0M  
 mdxfind-32              2025-11-10 17:08  3.3M  (32-bit)
 mdxfind.exe             2025-11-10 19:01  3.8M  
 mdxfind                 2025-11-10 17:45  3.9M  
 mdxfind.static          2025-11-10 17:45  3.9M  DEPRECATED - use mdxfind
 mdxfind-32.exe          2025-11-10 20:12  4.0M  (32-bit)
 mdxfind.freebsd         2025-11-10 16:37  4.1M  
 mdxfind.mac             2025-11-10 16:27  4.9M  
 mdxfind.macm1           2025-11-10 16:27  4.9M  DEPRECATED - use mdxfind.mac (universal)
 mdxfind-1.136.zip       2025-11-11 00:53   16M  
 mdxfind-latest.zip      2025-11-11 00:53   16M  stable symlink to latest

* File not part of the distro -- metadata added by me (errors mine, not Cynosure Prime's)
** File not part of the distro -- metadata added by Waffle

Credits

All credit to Waffle and hops of CynoSure Prime for this powerful hash-cracking tool. A serious amount of careful thought and insight has gone into making it reliable and efficient.

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