Trying to crack a weak password using John

password

I have a computer from the 1990s. It has an (extent) EFS file-system which cannot be wrote to in linux, so i cannot reset the password manually. So i have to crack my password. For this I am trying to use John the ripper.

in a file me2, I have an entry from the original /etc/passwd file:
root:8sh9JBUR0VYeQ:0:0:Super-User,,,,,,,:/:/bin/ksh

Some people from another thread suggested this might be a DES password.

So here, I am trying to crack this password, so I can get back into this computer. 

sudo john me2
Loaded 1 password hash (descrypt, traditional crypt(3) [DES 128/128 SSE2-16])
Press 'q' or Ctrl-C to abort, almost any other key for status
Warning: MaxLen = 13 is too large for the current hash type, reduced to 8

I see the warning, and I am wondering what that means.
I left John the ripper running for a few hours and came back. It seems like its still going… So I'm thinking something must not be right.

Best Answer

Your root password is qwer134. 

% /usr/sbin/john --show pwdfile 
root:qwer134:0:0:Super-User,,,,,,,:/:/bin/ksh
lp:passwd1:9:9:Print Spooler Owner:/var/spool/lp:/bin/sh
nuucp:NO PASSWORD:10:10:Remote UUCP User:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lib/uucp/uucico

3 password hashes cracked, 0 left

It took john 2.5 days to find the root password and could easily have taken much longer. You can crypt the password to verify the hashes really match:

% perl -le 'print crypt("qwer134", "8s")' 
8sh9JBUR0VYeQ
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