openwall / openwall/john

Mute single mode output when there is no words to work with

Open
#5,945 7 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
C
Stars
13.6k
Forks
2.6k
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

See https://github.com/openwall/john/issues/5944#issuecomment-3772222818

When there's no login, gecos nor any other info for seed words, we could want to mute the 'single' mode output for improving signal-to-noise ratio in the output:

Proceeding with single, rules:Single
Almost done: Processing the remaining buffered candidate passwords, if any.

We could opt to still output something along the lines of "Single mode skipped for lack of seed words" but then we're down to very small reduction of output (though more accurate info).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked issue comment and reproduce single mode using input with no login, gecos, or other seed-word information. Trace the single-mode output path and determine where the two messages are emitted; done means that output is muted, or replaced by the proposed explicit skip message, in the no-seed-word case.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
cli, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.