Crunch Cheat Sheet
Generate custom wordlists from charset and length rules.
Overview
Crunch builds wordlists on the fly from character sets, length bounds, and pattern placeholders. Use it to create targeted lists for hashcat/John/Hydra instead of downloading multi-gigabyte generic dumps. Generated lists can be huge—plan disk space and scope.
Install
sudo apt install crunchcrunch -hls /usr/share/crunch/charset.lstEssential commands
min max charset output
crunch 6 8 0123456789abcdef -o hex.txtfixed length lowercase
crunch 8 8 abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz -o lower8.txtpattern: @ = lower, , = upper, % = digit, ^ = special
crunch 8 8 -t ,@@^^%%% -o pattern.txtCommon workflows
Date-based passwords —
crunch 8 8 -t @@@@%%%% -o dates.txt # 4 letters + 4 digitscrunch 10 10 -t summer%%%% -o summer.txtCharset from file —
crunch 6 8 -f /usr/share/crunch/charset.lst mixalpha-numeric -o mix.txtcrunch 4 6 -f charset.lst numeric -o pins.txtPipe to another tool (no huge file) —
crunch 4 4 0123456789 | head -n 1000crunch 6 6 abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz | hashcat -m 1000 hashes.txt -Split output —
crunch 8 8 abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz -o START -b 10mb -o STARTFlags reference
min max | Length range |
|---|---|
-o | Output file |
-t | Pattern (@, ,, %, ^) |
-f | Charset from .lst |
-s | Start string |
-c | Lines per file (split) |
-b | Max size per file |
-z | Compress (gzip/bzip/lzma) |
Tips
- Estimate size before generating: crunch 8 8 charset -s | tail (dry run options vary by version).
- Combine with OSINT (company name, season) in -t patterns instead of full brute force.
- For GPU masks, hashcat -a 3 is often faster than multi-terabyte crunch output.
- @ lowercase, , uppercase, % number, ^ symbol in -t patterns.