Have you ever wondered how cybersecurity experts find weaknesses in systems during penetration tests? Well, CEWL is a handy tool in Kali Linux that helps with just that.
CEWL, which stands for Custom Word List generator is designed to aid security professionals in the creation of targeted wordlists for password cracking, penetration testing, and other security assessments.
CEWL works by crawling a specified target website or document, extracting relevant words, and compiling them into a customized wordlist → it allows analysts to generate wordlists based on the language, jargon, and themes specific to the target organization or industry.
CEWL greatly improves the speed and success rate of password cracking and brute force attacks, allowing security teams to detect vulnerabilities and fortify defenses in advance.
Scenario using CEWL in Kali Linux to create a custom wordlist
- A cybersecurity team is hired to test a company's network security.
- They use CEWL in Kali Linux to create a custom wordlist based on the company's website.
- The wordlist includes industry terms, company names, and employee usernames.
- The team then uses the wordlist to crack weak passwords on the company's login portal.
- They also simulate brute force attacks on other services like SSH or FTP.
- Through these tests, they uncover vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access.
- The team presents their findings to the company and recommends stronger password policies and security measures.
From a technical view → using command
cewl <target_website_URL> -w <output_filename>
- Some of the commonly used options include:
-lor-lowercase: Converts all extracted words to lowercase in the wordlist.-uor-uppercase: Converts all extracted words to uppercase in the wordlist.-ror-remove: Removes duplicate words from the generated wordlist.-mor--min_word_length: Sets the minimum word length to include in the wordlist.-depth: specify the maximum depth for crawling- A depth of 2 means that
cewlwill gather content from the initial URL (depth 0), follow links to pages directly linked from the initial page (depth 1), and also follow links on those pages to gather content from subpages (depth 2).
Summary:
- CEWL is a Custom Word List generator tool available in Kali Linux.
- It aids in creating targeted wordlists for password cracking and penetration testing.
- The tool crawls target websites or documents to extract relevant words, enhancing efficiency in security assessments.
- CEWL's customization capabilities make it indispensable for tailoring wordlists to specific targets, thereby strengthening cybersecurity defenses.