hashcat v8.0.0 Released
https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat/releases/tag/v8.0.0
hashcat v8.0.0 was officially released on October 25, 2026, bringing the largest update in hashcat's history. This release introduces new attack modes, additional hashing algorithms, major performance optimizations, and improved distributed cracking capabilities.
Release Highlights
11 major features, including 4 new attack modes.
146 new hash modes and 26 new cryptographic primitives.
306 bug fixes, including 64 memory safety fixes.
Performance improvements exceeding 50x for certain algorithms.
FPGA acceleration support, initially for bcrypt.
Improved distributed cracking, keyspace management, and GPU utilization.
Contributions from 63 developers across 4,091 modified files.
Major New Features
PCFG Attacks -a 4: Probabilistic password generation using trained grammars, with support for distributed cracking.
Hash Recipes -m 4000: Define custom hashing algorithms directly from the command line without writing dedicated hashcat modules.
FPGA Support -m 75000: Hardware acceleration for bcrypt using supported FPGA boards alongside GPUs.
Table Attacks -a 5: Return of the original hashcat-legacy table attack mode.
Wordlists in Masks -a 12: Insert wordlist candidates into masks using ?w and ?q.
Feed Plugins -a 8: Integrate external candidate generators with distributed processing and restore support.
Association Attacks -a 9: Improved account-specific password candidate generation.
Expanded Rule Support: Apply rules across additional attack modes.
Password Lookup --lookup: Check whether an attack generates a specific password and determine its position.
Performance Improvements
Several algorithms received substantial optimizations:
Algorithm
Speedup
Hardware
Raw Private Keys
32x to 58x
RTX 4090 / RX 7900 XTX / Arc A770
PKZIP
13.8x
RTX 4090
Radmin3
11x
RTX 4090
RACF KDFAES
10.9x
Arc A770
LM
8.7x
Arc A770
NetNTLMv1
2.9x to 3.8x
Apple Metal
Additional improvements include faster GPU autotuning, better multi-GPU utilization, reduced memory overhead, and faster hash loading.
New Hash Modes and Platform Support
The 146 new hash modes include support for yescrypt, Kerberos 5 etype 3, FreeBSD GELI, OpenBSD softraid, Google fscrypt, KDE KWallet, OpenSSH bcrypt-pbkdf, BIP39 passphrases, MSSQL 2025, and iClass.
Platform improvements include Apple Metal 4, AMD Mesa rusticl OpenCL support, and a new shared libhashcat library.
Distributed cracking improvements include seekable compressed wordlists xz and zstd, expanded keyspace controls, a redesigned Brain database, and configurable memory limits.
Important Upgrade Notes
--restore now displays the saved command rather than executing it (CVE-2026-68766).
Brain protocol upgraded to v2. Clients and servers must be updated together.
Custom v7.1.2 plugins require rebuilding.
The -w workload parameter is now ignored.
Hash mode 72000 has been replaced by 73000.
Several fixes address missed passwords in WPA, NTLM, SAP, and Argon2 attacks.
Downloads and Release Notes
Download: https://hashcat.net/hashcat/
GitHub Release: https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat/releases/tag/v8.0.0
Full Release Notes (PDF): https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat/blob/v8.0.0/docs/releases_notes_v8.0.0.pdf
Source Code: https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat
Special thanks to atom (Jens Steube) and all the hashcat developers, contributors, and testers for their continued work on this project!
