AES Encryption

[Drakhl]

I've been using a program to encrypt the files on my hard drive in a 256 bit AES encryption. I tend to be freakishly paranoid and now I am having second thoughts as to whether its solid encryption or not. I downloaded the john ripper program and attempted to begin cracking the files.

John-386 --wordlist=password.lst encrypt.bfa

(the latter is the name of the file that is encrypted)

I get this message: "No password hashes loaded."

I have no idea what to do about this, i've read all the FAQs and documentation, and it suggests to me that maybe john ripper doesn't support the AES encryption. Does anyone have any idea how to patch this or find another program that does what I want?

[Cabhan]

My very first Google hit (which also happens to be the John the Ripper FAQ: the first place you should have looked):

http://www.openwall.com/john/doc/FAQ.shtml

Q: Why doesn't John load my password file? It says "No password hashes loaded".
A: Your password file might be shadowed. You need to get both /etc/passwd and the shadow file, and combine them into one file for use with John. Please refer to EXAMPLES. As the system administrator, you're supposed to know the name and location of your shadow file.
A: All of the password hashes found in the file (that John recognizes as such) might be already cracked by previous invocations of John.
A: The file you're trying to run John on might in fact not be a password file at all.
A: Your command line syntax might be wrong, resulting in John trying to load a wrong file.
A: Your password file format or hash type(s) might not be supported by John, or at least by the version and build of John that you're using. If you're positive that this is the case, you may want to check the contributed resources list on John the Ripper homepage for a suitable patch and, if unsuccessful with that, post a note to the mailing list (see CONTACT) including a sample password file line that John does not load (please make sure that the password is already changed by the time you post).

[Drakhl]

I have no idea what to do about this, i've read all the FAQs and documentation,

You mean that :P

I read that exact file, and my question is which one of those problems could it be? Its certainly not shadowed, I encrypted it myself on my hard drive...So Im guessing it is because john doesn't crack AES.

[Cabhan]

Oh. Sorry for my rudeness, then.

Well indeed, John lists a number of supported encryption methods, and AES is not among them. I did find a post at:

http://www.matasano.com/log/2005/04/djb-vs-aes.html

That links to a paper describing some method of cracking AES: you might take a look at that and see if you can gather anything.