Cryptography Hacks - Hash Encryption using DuckDuckGo Search Engine

Over the past several months, it has become clear that the Internet and our Privacy have been fundamentally compromised. A Private search engine DuckDuckGo claims that when you click on one of their search results, they do not send personally identifiable information along with your request to the third party.

Like Google dorks (advance search patterns), there are thousands of similar, but technically more useful search hacks are also available in DuckDuckGo called DuckDuckGoodies. Today I am going to share about Handy "Cryptography" using DuckDuckGo search engine.

Whether you are a Hacker, Cracker or a Researcher, you need to face a number of hash strings in your day to day life. Hashing is a one way encryption of a plain text or a file, generally used to secure passwords or to check the integrity of the file. There is a certain set of hashing algorithms, e.g.md5, sha1, sha-512 etc.

A hash function generates the exact output if executed n number of times with the same input. If there is a very small change in the input, there will be a difference between the two outputs.

Duckduckgo is a search engine which gives you a flexibility to perform such operations. It enables user to generate the hash of strings, find the algorithm used for generating a hash, give other equivalent hashes of certain hash input.

1.) Generating a Strong Password: The security and integrity of our passwords are a constant battle. The password is the only lock which can make your private information more secure. One of the biggest reasons why people use weak passwords is usually a combination of convenience, and the ability to recall them easily. But using a weak password is the equivalent to installing a lock on your front door that you could open with a Popsicle stick.

Last year, we reported that hackers managed to crack 16-character alphanumeric password in less than an HOUR. No password is foolproof, but by using a long, unique and strong password you can make your password complicated enough to slow down password cracking programs. DuckDuckGo provides you a feature of generating a strong password instantly.

Search Term: password 15 strong

Where 15 is the password length.

2.) Generating a Hash: Hashing makes it difficult for an attacker to retrieve the original plain text string back from the encrypted password and it lets sites keep a list of hashes, rather than plain text passwords.

Using DuckDuckGo's Handy option, you can generate a hash value of any string just by using the following syntax on the search engine.

md5 TheHackerNews

sha512 TheHackerNews

sha TheHackerNews

sha224 TheHackerNews

sha256 TheHackerNews

sha384 TheHackerNews

Where TheHackerNews is the plain text string and md5 or sha is the hashing algorithm.

3.) Identifying Hash Algorithm: Manual finding of the algorithm used for generating the hash is a tedious task. DuckDuckGo provides you an inbuilt hash identification tool, which allows you to identify the hashing algorithm used for generating the hash string given as input.

4.) Finding Plain text from Hashes: One more great feature provided by DuckDuckGo search engine is that it gives you plain text value and equivalent hash code in other algorithms. DuckDuckGo is not cracking hashes for you, but actually matches the hash value of the previously leaked database archive.

Tor exit enclave: DuckDuckGo also operates a Tor exit enclave, which basically means that if you're using DuckDuckGo through the Tor anonymity tool, you will achieve end-to-end anonymous, encrypted search that is faster than what you might expect with Tor browsing, alone.