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I am learning to use Kali Linux, and I am just a beginner. I'm following a course in which is teaching me how to use “John The Ripper” and I have followed the commands.

I have written:

locate rockyou.txt

This works perfectly okay but my problem is with the next command. I write:

john --format=raw-md5 /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz /root/Desktop/passw.txt

In the tutorial, the guy manages to crack the password, but for me it shows up with this error message:

Warning: invalid UTF-8 seen reading /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz
Error: UTF-16 BOM seen in input file.

Why is this happening?

What am I doing wrong?

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  • So is the file a .txt file or a .gz file? What operating system was the file created on?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:09
  • the "passw" file is .txt, I am on Kali Linux, but it's through VirtualBox on Windows 10
    – R.M.R
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:10
  • SO why isn’t the file extension in the second command a gz
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:19
  • Edit your question to include ls -alh for both of the directories in your question. Do not submit this information as a comment. Edit your question to include the instructions you are following.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:34

4 Answers 4

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I was having the same issue, your passw.txt file might be the problem.

Try opening passw.txt in notepad++, look at the bottom right corner and if it says something like "UTF-16 BOM", go to the encoding menu near the top left and change it to UTF-8, save, and try running it again

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remove .gz from the second command. Run it like this:

john --format=raw-md5 /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt /root/Desktop/passw.txt
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  • I've tried that, and it just comes up with this error: stat: /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt: No such file or directory
    – R.M.R
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:30
  • When I have it saved to my desktop
    – R.M.R
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:30
  • usr/share/wordlists/ would be the incorrect directory in that case if rockyou.txt is contained with the Desktop directory for the root user.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:33
  • ok, run the command 'gunzip /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz' then try my solution again. According to the error in your post, /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz exists it's just compressed.
    – usmc0341
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:35
  • A .gz file would indeed have a UTF-16 BOM character.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:50
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extract the gzip using gunzip

gunzip /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz

then use the extracted text file (rockyou.txt) to crack the hash

john --format=Raw-MD5 -w=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt /root/Desktop/passw.txt
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You don't need to use the wordlist for that course. Do this, it'll work

john --format=raw-md5 /root/Desktop/passw.txt
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