hashcat - attack modes

Hashcat has five main attack modes, each suited to different cracking strategies:

-a 0 — Straight Mode

Applies wordlists as-is (optionally with rules).

hashcat -a 0 hashes.txt wordlist.txt

-a 1 — Combinator Attack

Combines words from two dictionaries.

hashcat -a 1 hashes.txt dict1.txt dict2.txt

-a 3 — Brute force (Mask) Attack

Tests all combinations defined by a mask.

hashcat -a 3 hashes.txt ?l?l?l?l?d?d

first three are lowercase alphabets and the last two are numbers

-a 6 — Hybrid Wordlist + Mask

Appends a mask to each word in a wordlist.

hashcat -a 6 hashes.txt wordlist.txt ?d?d

-a 7 — Hybrid Mask + Wordlist

Prepends a mask to each word in a wordlist.

hashcat -a 7 hashes.txt ?d?d wordlist.txt

🧠 Tip: Combine -a 0 with --rules for powerful transformations like leetspeak, suffixing numbers, etc.

Let me know your use case and I’ll suggest the most effective mode.