Instead of one giant file.txt.gz, split it into 10 smaller compressed chunks (e.g., chunk_aa.gz, chunk_ab.gz). Then, launch 10 instances of Hashcat, each reading its own compressed chunk via a pipe.
# Split and compress a master wordlist
split -l 5000000 master.txt part_
gzip part_*
# Hash file (hash.txt) contains:
# 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99
gunzip -c /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz | hashcat -m 1000 -a 0 hash.txt
The 7z command-line tool has a critical flag: -so (standard output). This writes the extracted content to stdout.
Command:
7z x -so rockyou.7z | hashcat -a 0 -m 1400 ntlm_hashes.txt
Breakdown:
Warning: Some .7z files contain multiple files inside the archive. The -so flag will concatenate them into one stream. Ensure your archive only contains one wordlist, or use 7z l archive.7z to inspect first. hashcat compressed wordlist
gzip is old. zstd (Zstandard) offers better compression and faster decompression. Install zstd and use it with Hashcat.
Compress:
zstd -o wordlist.zst wordlist.txt
Use with Hashcat:
zstd -dc wordlist.zst | hashcat -a 0 hash.txt
Benchmarks show zstd decompresses 3-5x faster than gzip on multi-core CPUs, meaning less GPU idle time. Instead of one giant file