Distributed Network John The Ripper 0.2.5

Distributed Network John The Ripper is a client/server framework that wraps around a slightly modified version of John The Ripper.
In contrast to the MPI version of John, dnetj allows the use of nodes which are of differing speeds and for nodes which do not run 24/7.
This tool was written for a number of reasons, firstly the MPI version requires an MPI installation on each node, and for the nodes to be configured together and be roughly the same speed. Also, although other distributed password crackers exist (such as djohn or medussa) they all have their own limitations.
The server loads a set of password hashes, and splits the available keyspace into "work units" of a configurable size. The clients connect and retrieve the hashes, as well as a set of work units to process. Once a client has processed some work units, it connects back to the server to submit the completed units as well as any passwords which have been cracked.
Possible uses include eg, running as a background task on all the workstations in an office.
Note, this tool is at an early stage of development and is likely to be very buggy, although it is functional. Bug reports and/or patches are strongly encouraged.
Main features:
- Distributed client/server model, any number of clients can be supported and can be brought up and down at will
- Support for any cipher supported by John 1.7.2 (additional cipher patches should be able to be applied normally)
- Keep the changes to John to a minimum, so that patches/updates can still be applied without too much fuss
- Uses the same optimized encryption routines as John
- Cracked hashes are stored in the standard john.pot format, so they can be displayed with john -show
- Passwd files sent to clients are sanitised (only the hash is sent, other fields from the passwd file are removed)
- Capability for auto client registration
- Code is intentionally kept clean to aid porting
Supported Platforms
Dnetj has been tested on the following systems:
- Linux/x86
- Linux/amd64
- Linux/sparc
- MacOSX/PPC
- MacOSX/Intel
- Solaris/x86
Version restrictions:
- Clients will sometimes crash if unable to connect to the server for a long period of time.
- Work unit size is limited to a 32bit integer number of crypts (ie: 4294967296)
- Node performance calculations wrap once the node has performed more than 4294967296 crypts, so nodes may appear to be much slower than they truly are.
- Doesnt work with NTLM, as the NTLM hash is stored in a different field of the passwd file.
- Traffic is sent in plain text (this makes debugging easier at this early stage of development)
- Makefile is very basic, and has no configure script, compilation on Solaris requires adding -lnsl -lsocket to the compile command.
Enhancements:
- Basic functionality is implemented, and dnetj is usable, but there are many things still to be implemented and a lot more testing is needed.