---
name: "bruteforce-luks"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "bruteforce-luks"
version: "1.4.0-4"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/bruteforce-luks"
---

# bruteforce-luks(1)

try to find the password of a LUKS volume

## NAME

bruteforce-luks - try to find the password of a LUKS volume

## SYNOPSIS

**bruteforce-luks \[options\]** *\<path to LUKS volume\>*

## DESCRIPTION

The purpose of this program is to try to find the password of a LUKS encrypted volume.

It can be used in two ways:

• brute force attack: try all the possible passwords given a character set. It is especially useful if you know something about the password (i.e. you forgot a part of your password but still remember most of it). Finding the password of a volume without knowing anything about it would take way too much time (unless the password is really short and/or weak).

• dictionary attack: try all the passwords in a file.

The program can use several threads (the number of threads can be specified with the *-t* command line option).

Sending a USR1 signal to a running **bruteforce-luks** process makes it print progress info to standard error and continue.

## OPTIONS

```

```

- **-b \<string\>**

  Beginning of the password. Default: ""

- **-e \<string\>**

  End of the password. Default: ""

- **-f \<file\>**

  Read the passwords from a file instead of generating them.

- **-h**

  Show help and quit.

- **-l \<length\>**

  Minimum password length (beginning and end included). Default: 1

- **-m \<length\>**

  Maximum password length (beginning and end included). Default: 8

- **-s \<string\>**

  Password character set. Default: "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU\
             VWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

- **-t \<n\>**

  Number of threads to use. Default: 1

- **-v \<n\>**

  Print progress info every n seconds.

- **-w \<file\>**

  Restore the state of a previous session if the file exists, then write the state to the file regularly (~ every minute).

## EXAMPLES

Try to find the password of a LUKS encrypted volume using 4 threads, trying only passwords with 5 characters:

```
    bruteforce-luks -t 4 -l 5 -m 5 /dev/sdb1
```

Try to find the password of a LUKS encrypted volume using 8 threads, trying only passwords with 5 to 10 characters beginning with "W4l" and ending with "z":

```
    bruteforce-luks -t 8 -l 5 -m 10 -b "W4l" -e "z" /dev/sda2
```

Try to find the password of a LUKS encrypted volume using 8 threads, trying only passwords with 10 characters using the character set "P情8ŭ":

```
    bruteforce-luks -t 8 -l 10 -m 10 -s "P情8ŭ" /dev/sdc3
```

Try to find the password of a LUKS encrypted volume using 6 threads, trying the passwords contained in a dictionary file:

```
    bruteforce-luks -t 6 -f dictionary.txt /dev/sdd1
```

Instead of passing a block device to the program, you can copy the beginning of the LUKS volume to a file and pass this file to the program:

```
    sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/tmp/luks-header bs=1M count=10
    bruteforce-luks -t 4 -l 5 -m 5 /tmp/luks-header
```

Print progress info:

```
    pkill -USR1 -f bruteforce-luks
```

Print progress info every 30 seconds:

```
    bruteforce-luks -t 6 -f dictionary.txt -v 30 /dev/sdd1
```

Save/restore state between sessions:

```
    bruteforce-luks -t 6 -f dictionary.txt -w state.txt /dev/sdd1
      (Let the program run for a few minutes and stop it)
    bruteforce-luks -t 6 -w state.txt /dev/sdd1
```