hydra

hydra [options] target service

Hydra is a parallelized network login cracker used in authorized penetration testing and security auditing. It systematically attempts username and password combinations against remote authentication services, drawing credentials from user-supplied wordlists, single values, or a brute-force character-set generator (-x). Multiple connection threads run in parallel (configurable with -t), allowing it to test a large number of combinations efficiently.Hydra supports over 50 protocols and services out of the box, including SSH, FTP, Telnet, HTTP/HTTPS (basic auth, form-based, and digest), SMB, RDP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SMTP, IMAP, LDAP, VNC, and many more. For web applications, its `http-post-form` and `http-get-form` modules accept custom request templates with `^USER^`/`^PASS^` placeholder markers for injecting credentials. Results can be saved to a file (-o) for later analysis, and interrupted sessions can be resumed with -R.

TARGET

Target host.

Service to attack (ssh, ftp, http-post-form).

Single username.

Load several usernames from a file.

Single password.

Load several passwords from a file.

Colon-separated `login:pass` list, instead of -L/-P.

Also try a null password (n), the login as password (s), and/or the reversed login (r).

Generate passwords via brute force instead of a wordlist (e.g. `1:8:a` for lowercase letters, length 1-8).

Attack a list of targets read from a file, one per line (`host[:port]`).

Write found login/password pairs to a file instead of stdout.

Output format for -o: `text` (default), `json`, or `jsonv1`.

Exit as soon as a valid pair is found: per host (-f), or globally across all targets (-F, requires -M).

Parallel connections to run per target (default: 16).

Parallel connections overall when using -M (default: 64).

Use a non-default port for the service.

Perform the connection over SSL/TLS.

Use IPv4 (default) or IPv6 addresses.

Restore a previous aborted or crashed session from `hydra.restore`.

Verbose mode / show the login+pass combination being tried for every attempt.

Display help information.

For use only against systems you're authorized to test - unauthorized use is illegal in most jurisdictions. Aggressive attacks can trigger account lockouts, IPS/WAF bans, or degrade the target service. `-h` (not `--help`) prints the short option summary; `hydra -U <service>` prints module-specific options.

Hydra was created in 2000 by van Hauser of THC (The Hacker's Choice), billed as the first parallelized network login cracker. Development continues on GitHub with contributions from David Maciejak and others.

ncrack(1), medusa(1), john(1)

Source code