Hashcat can achieve speeds of over 18 million combinations per second on CPU and over a billion on some GPUs, and it supports around 245 hash algorithms. Which statement best describes this performance claim?

• A. It only runs on GPUs.
• B. It can achieve speeds over 18 million combinations per second on CPU and over a billion on GPUs.
• C. It cannot crack salted hashes.
• D. It supports exactly 245 hash algorithms but at very low speed.

Answer: (B)

This statement is about Hashcat’s performance characteristics across hardware and its broad hash-type support. The numbers show that Hashcat can push tens of millions of guesses per second on a CPU and can exceed a billion guesses per second on capable GPUs, illustrating how GPU acceleration dramatically increases throughput due to parallel processing. The note that it supports around 245 hash algorithms indicates wide compatibility with many hash formats, not a limit on speed. So the best description is that Hashcat can achieve speeds over 18 million combinations per second on CPU and over a billion on GPUs, while supporting around 245 hash algorithms. The other options are incorrect because Hashcat runs on both CPU and GPU, can crack salted hashes with appropriate formats, and the claim does not imply low speed with exactly 245 algorithms.