Prince Processor

24 Mar, 2025 · 1 min read

Re-imagination of the original PRINCE processor written in C.
The name PRINCE is used as an acronym and stands for PRobability INfinite Chained Elements, which are the building blocks of the algorithm.

Following a series of unfortunate events, I was locked out of an encrypted drive. In an attempt to generate a dictionary using conventional methods, I ran into some issues with Hashcat’s PRINCE processor. It turned out that it contains an overflow error, where it would exit prematurely, leaving lots of word combinations untouched. I then compiled a new version in Go, overcoming these issues. Due to the mathematical complexity, processing a small wordlist takes a lot of time and resources.

I am still to unlock the drive. It’s a lesson of always keeping a backup of even the most memorable passphrases.