How to Install John the Ripper on all platforms

John the Ripper is open-source software that comes preinstalled in Kali Linux. It is mainly recognized by cracking and recovering passwords for Linux, Winrar, Windows, FTP, SSH, WordPress, etc.

Initially, it was released for the UNIX system to detect weak passwords, but now support more than 100 hashes and ciphers. It comes in two different variants free and premium.

Table of Contents

Free vs Premium

Apart from being free, John the Ripper comes in three different premium package.

Free

A standard tool without any support. (Enough for the beginners)

John the Ripper Pro for Linux

In the pro version, Openwall provides the tool with premium support (via e-mail) for the first 30 days up to 1 hour after purchase.

John the Ripper Pro for Linux with upgrades

In the pro with upgrades version, Openwall provides the tool on the condition that free upgrade further 1.x Pro releases, and premium support (via e-mail) for the first 30 days up to 1 hour.

John the Ripper Pro for Linux with upgrades and support

In the pro with upgrades and support version, Openwall provides the tool on the condition that free upgrade further 1.x Pro releases, and premium support (via e-mail) for the first 1 year up to 2 hours.

This includes the support for the community version of John the Ripper Jumbo.

I probably suggest you start with the free version because instead of their premium support, we guide you on setting it up on your system.

Installation

Let us install John the Ripper on Linux, macOS, and Windows systems. It will just take a couple of minutes.

Install on Linux

John the Ripper is available by default for major Linux repositories, and for the rest, you can use snap.

Install on Debian and Ubuntu

Open your terminal, and update your system to fetch the latest repositories before installation.

$ sudo apt update & sudo apt upgrade

After the complete system upgrade, you are good to install John the Ripper in your system using the below command.

$ sudo apt install john

That’s all, now type the "john" command in your terminal to start cracking.

If you do not want it anymore and want to remove it completely from your system then use the below command.

$ sudo apt purge john

Install on RHEL

In the RHEL system, you need to take the help of snap to install John the Ripper. Before starting with the installation, add below the EPEL repository depending upon the RHEL version.

RHEL 8

$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
$ sudo dnf upgrade

RHEL 7

$ sudo rpm -ivh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Next, you need to add a few more recommended extra repositories on both RHEL versions.

$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable "rhel-*-optional-rpms" --enable "rhel-*-extras-rpms"
$ sudo yum update

Now you can install snap on your system using the below command.

$ sudo yum install snapd

After installation, enable the systemd unit that manages the snap communication socket.

$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket

You need to reboot your system to reflect all changes properly. Then use the below command to install John in your RHEL system.

$ sudo snap install john-the-ripper

That’s all, now type the "john" command in your terminal to start cracking.

If you want to remove it from snap package in the future use the below command.

$ sudo snap remove john-the-ripper

Install on Fedora

On Fedora, it can be installed using the yum package manager using the below command.

$ yum install john

Install on Arch and Manjaro

For Arch and Manjaro users, you can easily install it using the Pacman package manager on your system.

$ pacman -S john

To remove it from your system use the below command.

$ pacman -Rs john

Source Code

You can directly clone and build John the Ripper from the source code. The main advantage of using is many important tools like zip2john is not included by default in the package installer. To use them you need to clone the Jumbo version of John.

First, install the required tools for the compiler using the below command.

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev

Also, install the below-recommended tools after compiler.

$ sudo apt-get install yasm libgmp-dev libpcap-dev libnss3-dev libkrb5-dev pkg-config libbz2-dev zlib1g-dev

Clone the latest version of John the Ripper in your system using the below command. (Any error came run "apt install git")

$ git clone git://github.com/magnumripper/JohnTheRipper -b bleeding-jumbo john

Go to the source folder to compile the John the Ripper.

$ cd john/src

And build from code.

$ ./configure && make -s clean && make -sj4

To start using john type the below command.

$ ../run/john --test

Install on macOS

In macOS, open your terminal using Command+Space search and click it. If you have already installed brew in your system, skip and jump to the next command.

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" 2> /dev/null

It may ask for the user password, type, and press enter to start the brew installation process. Now use the below command to install John the Ripper in your macOS.

$ brew install john

Done! You can now use john.

Install on Windows

It is available in two different architectures, 32bit and 64bit, for windows users. Visit the Download page and download the one depending upon your system architecture.

Once you click the download link, compressed zip with John the Ripper will start downloading. Next, go to the download location and uncompress the zip using any compression tool. (recommended 7zip)

Next, you need to navigate inside the “run” directory and press swift+right click to list command prompt in the context menu like shown below.

In your command prompt, type "john" to use John the Ripper on windows.

Final Thought

Once John the Ripper is in your system, you can start cracking or recovering your lost password. We will publish more articles to recover Winrar’s password and others in the upcoming days.

Don’t forget to subscribe to us, and have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section.

Jake Redfield

Innovative tech mind with 12 years of experience working as a computer programmer, web developer, and security researcher. Capable of working with a variety of technology and software solutions, and managing databases.