The --prince mode in JtR is based on Atom's "princeprocessor" (a.k.

a "pp")
which was thankfully open-sourced (which we payed back by enhancing it and
submitting upstream). Scoobz also contributed major enhancements, mainly
significant speed optimizations.

Original documentation:
https://hashcat.net/events/p14-trondheim/prince-attack.pdf

The basic idea is to work a bit like wordlist mode, except we also combine all
the words to longer and longer candidates, in a clever order. A fairly small
wordlist can result in a vast amount of candidates. You actually don't need to
know a lot of the gory details, just try it instead of wordlist mode!

JtR prince mode crash course:

Usage: ./john --prince[=<wordlist file>] hashfile (...)

• The default wordlist file is the same as for wordlist mode.

• Differences from the original princeprocessor:

- You can use Jumbo's universal --stdout option for output to stdout (or pipe).
But normally you would run it as a normal JtR mode instead.
- You use Jumbo's universal --min-length and --max-length options for limiting
password lengths (pp's original options --pw-min and --pw-max). Also,
the defaults are automatically determined by the format as usual.
- You can use Jumbo's normal --dupe-suppression option for suppressing dupes
from input.
- You use Jumbo's universal session/resume capabilities.
- You use Jumbo's universal --node, --fork or MPI options for distribution.
- You can use JtR rules and/or external filter together with --prince.
- You can use JtR hybrid regex mode, or hybrid mask or even both, together
with --prince. You can even use this with rules and/or external filter at
the same time. When mask is used it will also accelerate use on GPU with
fast formats.
- Use mmap for loading: --prince-mmap. This is intended for when running many
processes on one same machine.
- You can use your .pot file as a wordlist: --prince-loopback.

• Other optional parameters in JtR:

– Limit element length: --prince-wl-max=N.
- Limit element counts: --prince-elem-cnt-min and/or --prince-elem-cnt-max.
- Permute case: --prince-case-permute.
- Calculate output length distribution from wordlist: --prince-wl-dist-len
(the default is to use a distribution derived from "Rockyou" dataset).
- Just print keyspace size: --prince-keyspace.
- pp's "limit" and "skip" options are supported as --prince-limit and
--prince-skip but you normally don't need them (eg. use --node or --fork).

An important property of PRINCE is that it works like a champ with UTF-8, due
to the fact it never actually modifes any input word (it merely concatenates
them).