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CeWL

Password Attacks

Beginnerlow risk

CeWL is a custom word list generator that spiders a target URL and creates a wordlist from the content. Great for targeted password attacks.

Installation

sudo apt install cewl

Basic Syntax

cewl <url>

Quick Facts

Full Name
CeWL (Custom Word List generator)
License
GPL
Author
DIGININJA
Written In
Ruby
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows (with Ruby)
Category
Wordlist Generation
Input Method
Website Spidering
Key Feature
Target-specific wordlist creation

Tool Overview

CeWL (Custom Word List generator) is a Ruby-based tool that spiders a target website and generates a custom wordlist from the content it finds. Unlike generic wordlists, CeWL creates dictionaries tailored to the specific target organization.

By crawling the target website to a specified depth, CeWL extracts words from page content, including company names, product terms, employee names, and industry jargon. This produces wordlists far more effective than generic lists for password attacks against that specific organization.

CeWL also supports email extraction, making it useful for username enumeration. Combined with password mutation rules in tools like John the Ripper or Hashcat, CeWL-generated wordlists significantly improve password cracking success rates.

Common Commands

cewl example.comSpider a site with default settings and print a wordlist to stdout
cewl -w wordlist.txt example.comWrite the harvested wordlist to a file instead of the screen
cewl -d 3 example.comIncrease the spidering depth to 3 links deep (default is 2)
cewl -d 0 -w page.txt example.comScrape only the single supplied page (no link following)
cewl -m 6 example.comOnly keep words that are at least 6 characters long
cewl -m 5 -d 2 -w wordlist.txt example.comCommon combo: depth 2, minimum length 5, output to file
cewl -c example.comShow the occurrence count next to each word found
cewl --lowercase example.comConvert every parsed word to lowercase
cewl --with-numbers example.comAlso accept words that contain digits, not just letters
cewl -o example.comAllow the spider to follow links to other (offsite) domains
cewl -k example.comKeep the downloaded pages/files on disk after spidering
cewl -e example.comExtract and include email addresses found on the site
cewl -e --email_file emails.txt example.comHarvest emails and write them to a dedicated file
cewl -n -e example.comSkip the wordlist and only output the discovered email addresses
cewl -a example.comInclude document metadata (author, software) via exiftool parsing

Step-by-Step Guide

  1. 1Identify a website belonging to your target organization
  2. 2Execute the tool against the URL
  3. 3Look over the resulting text file to ensure the terms make sense
  4. 4Import this list into your primary authentication testing tools
  5. 5Enhance the list by applying mutation rules

Warnings

Use Cases

Targeted Password Lists

Create wordlists using company-specific terms, products, and jargon from their website.

Username Enumeration

Extract email addresses from websites to build username lists for brute-force attacks.

Social Engineering

Gather words and phrases for crafting targeted phishing emails and social engineering attacks.

CTF Wordlists

Generate custom dictionaries for CTF challenges based on challenge-related websites.

Red Team Operations

Build target-specific password lists for more effective credential attacks.

Key Features

Related Tools

Crunch

Password Attacks

Pattern-based wordlist generator for creating wordlists from character sets and patterns.

John the Ripper

Password Attacks

Password cracker that uses CeWL-generated wordlists with rules for effective cracking.

Hashcat

Password Attacks

GPU-accelerated cracker for maximum speed with CeWL-generated wordlists.

Crunch

Password Attacks

Pattern-based wordlist generator for supplementing CeWL output.

Medusa

Password Attacks

Online brute-forcer for testing CeWL-generated passwords against live services.

Tags

#password-attacks

Output Explanation

Generates a localized text file containing words scraped directly from the provided web pages.

Ethical Usage Notice

This tool is designed for authorized security testing, educational purposes, and legitimate network administration only. Unauthorized access to computer systems is illegal.