A Detailed Guide on Medusa

Hi Pentesters! Let’s learn about a different tool Medusa, which is intended to be a speedy, parallel and modular, login brute forcer. The goal of the tool is to support as many services which allow remote authentication as possible. We can consider the following items to be some of the key features of the application.

1. Thread-based parallel testing. Brute-force testing can be performed against multiple hosts, users or passwords concurrently.
2. Flexible user input. Target information (host/user/password) can be specified in a variety of ways. For example, each item can be either a single entry or a file containing multiple entries. Additionally, a combination file format allows the user to refine their target listing.
3. Modular design. Each service module exists as an independent .mod file. This means that no modifications are necessary to the core application in order to extend the supported list of services for brute-forcing.

in This article will discuss the following options available with Medusa.

Table of Contents

1. Features of Medusa
2. Password Cracking for specific Username
3. Username Cracking for specific Password
4. To crack login credentials
5. Brute Force on Multiple Host
6. To attack a specific port rather than the default
7. Additional password checks (Null/Same)
8. To Save Logs in a File
9. Stop on Success.
10. To suppress start-up Banner
11. Verbose Mode
12. Error Debug level
13. Using Combo Entries
14. Concurrent testing on multiple logins
15. Display Module Usage Information

Features of Medusa

To get to know a detailed description of the options available in the Medusa tool just type in “medusa” in the kali terminal without any options, it will respectively dump all the available options with their description.

Syntax: Medusa [-h host|-H file] [-u username|-U file] [-p password|-P file] [-C file] – 0063M module [OPT]

You can use -d option to dump all the available modules.

Password Cracking for Specific Username

Being a brute forcer, we can use medusa to crack passwords if the username is known on any protocol. For this to work you should have a valid username and a file containing passwords to test.

So, for this following command can be used:

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -u ignite -P pass.txt -M ftp

Here, -h option is for mentioning target ip address, -u option for username and -P for file containing password lists. So this will crack the password for FTP protocol.

So, from the list of passwords, password 123 showed success for username ignite and for ftp login.

Username Cracking for Specific Password

Again, for this you should have a correct password so that you can use brute force to crack the username for ftp by using a file containing list of usernames.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -p 123 -M ftp

Here -h option is used for host, -U option for username file and -p is the password. So basically, you can perform brute force on the username field and can crack the correct username for the password.

To crack Login credentials

 Now let’s consider a situation where we want to target our host whose username and password both are not known. For this we will brute force both the fields username as well as password by using appropriate options present in medusa.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp

Here we have used -U option for username file, -P option for password file and -h for host name. We have attached a screenshot for your better understanding.

Brute Force on Multiple Host

Now let’s consider a different situation, where we have multiple hosts, and we need to crack login credentials for the respective hosts. So, we have created three text files for host, username and password.

medusa -H hosts.txt -U user.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp

Here, -H option will mention file for host name, -U will mention file for username and -P will mention file for passwords.

If in case you have multiple hosts and you want to attack on some of the ports concurrently, for that you can use -T option which will brute force on some ports only.

medusa -H hosts.txt -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -T 1
medusa -H hosts.txt -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -T 2

The first command will brute force on first host only, but the second will attack on 2 hosts concurrently.

To attack a specific port than default

Sometimes, the network admin may change the port number of service to another port due to security reasons. So, when performing a brute force attack using normal command so it will attack on default port. But we can use -n option so that attack will start on a mentioned port rather than the default port.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ssh
medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ssh -n 2222

Here, in the first command, we are using -h, -U and -M option and ssh service whose default port is 22. But due to security reasons, its port number is changed to 2222 as detected using the nmap scan and first command did not work. So, to launch the attack we used -n option which will specify the specific port number.

Additional password checks (Null/Same)

Medusa has a great option -e along with ns which will check [n] null password, [s] the same password as username while brute forcing on the password field.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -u ignite -P pass.txt -M ftp -e ns

Here, as you can observe, -e option is used in the command so with every username It is trying to match the following combination of password with a username.

User: Ignite     Password: “ “ as null password.

User: Ignite     Password: “Ignite” same as username

To Save Logs in a File

For better readability, record maintenance and future references we can save the output of the brute force attack of the medusa tool in a different text file. For this, we will use parameter -O to save output in text file.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -u ignite -P pass.txt -M ftp -O log.txt

Here, again the command is the same we have just added a new parameter -O to store the logs in text file log.txt. Then to ensure whether the output is stored in file, we have opened it using cat command. And the result shows the desired output.

Stop on Success

While using the above command, the attack will go on though we get the correct username and password, this may become tedious when the list of usernames and password is long.

So, to save from this medusa provides some options.

 medusa -H hosts.txt -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -f
 medusa -H hosts.txt -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -F

Above in the first command as you can observe -f option is used so that will stop scanning host after first valid username/password found.

And in the second command, -F option is used that will stop audit after first valid username/password found on any host.

 To suppress start-up Banner

Whenever you run medusa, always a start up banner is displayed. But this tool provides an option to remove the banner by using -b option.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -b

As in the screenshot displays, after applying -b option, the banner is suppressed.

Verbose Mode

This tool provides an option for verbose mode. There are in all six verbose level. All messages at or below the specified level will be displayed. The default level is 5. The following is the breakdown of the verbose levels:

0)EXIT APPLICATION 1)MESSAGE WITHOUT TAG 2)LOG MESSAGE WITHOUT TAG              3)IMPORTANT MESSAGE 4)ACCOUNT FOUND 5)ACCOUNT 6)CHECK  GENERAL MESSAGE

medusa -H hosts.txt -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -v
medusa -H hosts.txt -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -v 6

Here, in the given commands, verbose level 5 and level 6 is used. Level 5 performs account check and level 6 displays general message also.

Error Debug level

This option is used to give detailed description of error. There are 10 error debug level. All messages at or below the specified level will be displayed. The default level is 5.

The following is the breakdown of the error levels:

0: FATAL

1: ALERT

2: CRITICAL                                       

3: ERROR                             

4: WARNING                                     

5: NOTICE

6: INFO                                                

7: DEBUG                                            

8: DEBUG-AUDIT                             

9: DEBUG- SERVER

10: DEBUG – MODULE

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -w 0
medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -w 06
medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -w 07

Using Combo Entries

Medusa gives an option of using combo entries while brute forcing. The option -C uses a file containing combo entries. Combo files are colon separated and in the following format: host:user:password. If any of the three fields are left empty, the respective information should be provided either as single global value or as a list in a file. You can use following combinations.

host:user:password

host:user:

host::

username:password

username:

password

host::username

medusa -M ftp -C userpass.txt

So here first userpass.txt file is created where data is stored in form of host:username:password. And then medusa brute force attack is performed using -C option. You can take reference from screenshot attached.

Concurrent testing on multiple logins

If you want to perform concurrent testing on multiple logins so for that you use -t option. After that mention the number of logins you want to test concurrently and hence medusa will brute force on respective logins.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -t 4

So, while performing the attack it tested concurrently 4 logins at specified port and printed results for all four concurrently.

Display Module Usage Information

You can use a new option -q which will display module’s usage information. This should be used in conjunction with the “-M” option.

medusa -h 192.168.1.141 -U users.txt -P pass.txt -M ftp -q

Author: Divya Adwani is a researcher and technical writer who is very much keen to learn and enthusiastic to learn ethical hacking Contact here

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