Stochastic approach on hash cracking

Hash functions are used everywhere today, from wireless communications to password storage. Some of them are proven to be mathematically insecure, but still the only way to crack most of them is a brute-force or dictionary attack. Brute-force is usually discarded as an option since it consumes huge amounts of time. Dictionary attack is a regular approach on hash cracking. The attack is performed by selecting words from a dictionary and comparing their hashed value to the obtained value. Word selection is usually done sequentially, which indicates a very long execution time if the searched word is located at the end of the dictionary. This paper introduces a stochastic approach on word selection in a dictionary attack and shows that the approach is desirable if the searched word is found in the second half of the wordlist.