vanityhash - Man Page

vanityhash [ options ] hexfragment < inputfile

vanityhash --append [ options ] hexfragment < inputfile > outputfile

vanityhash is a tool that can discover data to be added to the end  of a file to produce a desired hex hash fragment.  It searches a  message space and runs a hashing algorithm against the original data  plus the appended data to determine if the desired hash fragment is  present.  vanityhash can run multiple parallel workers to effectively  make use of multiple processors/cores/threads, and supports multiple  hash digest types (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, etc).

vanityhash can be used to append data to files that are capable of  ignoring garbage data at the end of the file (such as ISO images and  some types of graphic images), in order to produce a “vanity” hash.   vanityhash is fast, as it only reads the base input data once, and then  reverts back to that base state over and over while it permeates the  search space, rather than hashing the entire source during each  permeation.

vanityhash operates on the concept of a “search space”.  For example,  given a 24-bit search space, vanityhash will run from 0x00000000 to  0x00ffffff, append the 4-byte packed version of each number to the end  of the input data, calculate the resulting hash, and search the hash  value for the desired hex fragment pattern.  A desired hex fragment can  be larger than the search space (for example, searching for “abcdef” in  a 16-bit search space), but the chances of finding a match reduce  drastically the larger the desired hex fragment is.

In its default operation, vanityhash will search the entire specified  search space and output all matching results to STDOUT, one result per  line, in the form “extradata hash”, where both “extradata” and “hash”  are in hex form.  When the --append option is specified, this  behavior changes.  If a match is found, the original input data plus  the extra data (in byte form) are outputted, and searching ends after  the first successful match.  If no matches are found, the original data  only is outputted.

-b bits, --bits=bits

Space to be searched, in bits.  Allowed values range from 1 to 64.   Default is 24.  Search spaces larger than 32 bits require a 64-bit  operating system, and a version of Perl compiled with 64-bit integer  support.

-p position, --position=position

The position within the hex hash to look for the desired fragment, in  hex digits.  The beginning starts at 0.  Default is 0.  A position that  extends the fragment beyond the length of the hash is not allowed.

-y,  --any-position

When enabled, this option will override --position and will return  hashes that contain the desired fragment in any position within the  hash.

-s seconds, --progress=seconds

The number of seconds between printing of progress lines, default 5  seconds.  A decimal value may be specified.  A value of 0 disabled  printing progress lines.

-w workers, --workers=workers

The number of workers to be spawned.  Default is 1.  Recommended value  is the number of logical processors on the running system.

-d digesttype, --digest=digesttype

The hashing digest type to use.  Default is “md5” Allowed values are  “md2”, “md4”, “md5”, and "shaN" where N is a valid SHA digest  value.  “sha1alt” is accepted to use Digest::SHA1 instead of  Digest::SHA.  Note that for many digest types, the appropriate Perl  module must be installed and available.

-a,  --append

When enabled, the original data is outputted back to STDOUT.  Then,  when/if the first matching hash is found, the data fragment used to  produce the matching hash is outputted to STDOUT.  STDOUT can then be  redirected to another file to produce the modified file.

-q,  --quiet

Normally vanityhash sends a fair amount of status information to STDERR  during operation.  When enabled, all non-error status information is  instead suppressed.

-?,  --help

Print a synposis and exit.

Search spaces larger than 32 bits require a 64-bit operating system,  and a version of Perl compiled with 64-bit integer support.

A block of computed data is added equal to the size of the integer type  the search space fits into (1 byte for 8 bits or less, 2 bytes for 9  through 16 bits, 4 bytes for 17 through 32 bits, 8 bytes for 33 through  64 bits), even if the search space could fit into a smaller raw byte  block (say, 3 bytes for a 20-bit search space).  While this does not  reduce (or increase) the possibility of finding a match in a given  search space, the extra null byte(s) in the block are technically  wasteful.

Extra bytes are packed according to system endianness.  Thus, search  results will be different between big and little endian systems.

vanityhash should work fine on any POSIX operating system, and has been  tested on Linux and Mac OS X.  It mostly works with Strawberry Perl for  Windows, but crashes at the end.  Suggestions to fix this would be  welcomed.

vanityhash was written by Ryan Finnie <ryan@finnie.org>.  vanityhash  was inspired by Seth David Schoen's 2003 program, hash_search.