Tuesday, May 11, 2021

John - Fixing "No OpenCL devices found" for fast GPU cracking

If anyone has tried to do password cracking, they might realize that they generally have 2 options:

1.) Hashcat - Small Range of Hash Formats - Fast Cracking (GPU)
2.) John The Ripper - Large Range of Hash Formats - Slow Cracking (CPU)

What many people don't know is that John can actually do GPU cracking in some instances!

When cracking a hash with John, many people have probably seen something similar to the following recommending the OpenCL variation

Warning: detected hash type "sometype", but the string is also recognized as "sometype-opencl"

But have simply glossed over it, since attempting to use --format:sometype-opencl has simply resulted in a No OpenCL devices found error, and the hash cracks fine (Albeit slowly using only the CPU)

This bug has existed for a long time - This is how to solve it, and get super-fast GPU cracking on John!

1.) In your John folder, open up etc\OpenCL\vendors\nvidia.icd in a text editor
2.) You will see something like c:\Windows\System32\nvopencl.dll
3.) Go to C:\Windows\System32\, and search for nvopencl64.dll - In my case, it was hidden inside a DriverStore folder
4.) Copy the path of it (If you have multiple, simply use the first one), and place the full path inside Johns nvidia.icd, replacing what's already there
5.) Save, and re-run john with the --format:whatever-opencl

Enjoy your fast GPU cracking :)

4 comments :

  1. Unknown ciphertext format name requested

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You need to make sure that your hash format actually supports OpenCL as not all of them do.

      You can use

      john --list-formats

      To list all the formats it has. I generally just try the normal version, then switch to the OpenCL version if I receive the "but the string is also recognized as ....-opencl" message.

      Delete
  2. thanks, it's working now:)

    ReplyDelete