Penglab
A Google Colab notebook setup for high-performance hash cracking and penetration testing tools.
What is Penglab?
Penglab is a Google Colab-based Jupyter notebook that provides a pre-configured environment for running high-performance hash cracking and penetration testing tools like Hashcat, John the Ripper, and Hydra. It solves the problem of requiring expensive local GPU hardware for security research by leveraging free cloud GPU resources.
Security researchers, CTF (Capture The Flag) participants, and penetration testers who need access to powerful hash-cracking capabilities without investing in local hardware.
Developers choose Penglab because it offers a free, ready-to-use setup with GPU acceleration on Google Colab, eliminating complex local configurations and providing enterprise-grade cracking speeds accessible to anyone with a Google account.
Overview
🐧 Abuse of Google Colab for cracking hashes.
Use Cases
Best For
- Cracking password hashes during CTF competitions
- Performing brute-force attacks with GPU acceleration
- Learning penetration testing tools in a cloud environment
- Running Hashcat benchmarks on high-performance GPUs
- Setting up quick SSH access for remote security testing
- Downloading and using common password wordlists rapidly
Not Ideal For
- Long-term penetration testing engagements requiring persistent, uninterrupted GPU access beyond Colab's time limits
- Organizations with strict data privacy policies that cannot expose sensitive hash data to cloud services
- Teams needing to integrate custom or proprietary security tools not pre-configured in the notebook
Pros & Cons
Pros
Leverages Google Colab's Tesla P100 GPUs for high-speed hash cracking, with benchmarks showing MD5 at 27008 MH/s, eliminating the need for expensive local hardware.
Requires only a Google account and a few clicks in Colab to install tools like Hashcat, John, and Hydra via the interactive notebook, avoiding complex local installations.
Includes essential penetration testing tools such as Hashcat for hash cracking, John the Ripper for password recovery, and Hydra for network attacks, all pre-configured for immediate use.
Enables remote shell access through ngrok tunneling, as mentioned in the README, facilitating command-line management and testing from any location without local setup.
Cons
Google Colab sessions have time limits and can be terminated unexpectedly, making it unreliable for long-running tasks or critical operations, as the environment is not persistent.
Relies on ngrok for SSH access and Google Colab for GPUs, introducing multiple points of failure and potential account restrictions if usage violates terms of service.
Only includes pre-selected tools; adding new software or custom configurations is constrained by the Colab notebook environment, which may not support all security tools or workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Found a gem we're missing?
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.