How to use Hashcat on GeForce RTX 50 series video cards. How to install the driver for GeForce RTX 5060, 5070, 5080, 5090 in Linux

Contents

1. Differences in password cracking on GeForce RTX 50 series video cards
2. How to find out the model of a graphics card in Linux. Displaying information about a graphics card in Linux
3. How to install NVIDIA Open in Arch Linux (Manjaro, BlackArch)
4. How to install NVIDIA Open on Debian, Kali Linux, Ubuntu, Linux Mint
5. How to check if Hashcat can use the NVIDIA graphics card on my computer
6. Conclusion

1. Differences in password cracking on GeForce RTX 50 series video cards

In recent years, Linux preparation for brute-force hashes using the Hashcat utility has been quite well-tested:

• installing Hashcat
• installing proprietary drivers for a video card
• installing CUDA

But if you repeat the installation commands that have already been tested for years, then they will not work for the new GeForce RTX 5060, 5070, 5080, 5090 graphic cards. This article will provide updated commands that will allow you to configure Linux to work effectively with Hashcat, including using GeForce RTX 50 series video cards.

So, the changes are that now the NVIDIA driver for Linux is released in two flavors:

• NVIDIA Proprietary (this is the same flavor that we have been installing for the past few years)
• NVIDIA Open (this is a relatively new flavor)

In general, the difference between these driver flavors is not very significant and did not particularly affect Hashcat users. This was the case before the release of the GeForce RTX 50 series. Starting with the release of the GeForce RTX 50 series video cards (since 2025), the difference between the driver versions has become significant – only NVIDIA Open now supports the GeForce RTX 50 series. This means that when installing the driver, you need to select NVIDIA Open – fortunately, this does not cause any difficulties, since it is present in the standard repositories of many Linux distributions.

A little more detail about the driver: What is NVIDIA Open and should Linux users switch to the new driver

Even if you have a previous-generation NVIDIA graphics card (but not too old, something released after 2019), you can still upgrade to the NVIDIA Open driver – although you may not notice much of a difference.

2. How to find out the model of a graphics card in Linux. Displaying information about a graphics card in Linux

Run the following command to output information about the GPUs available in your Linux computer:

lspci | grep VGA

Example output:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GB203M / GN22 [GeForce RTX 5080 Max-Q / Mobile] (rev a1)
6a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Granite Ridge [Radeon Graphics] (rev d4)

Since NVIDIA is present in this output, we can install the NVIDIA Open driver.

Note: if you run Linux in a VirtualBox virtual machine, the guest OS will not see the host computer's graphics card and will not be able to use it.

3. How to install NVIDIA Open in Arch Linux (Manjaro, BlackArch)

It is recommended to update the OS and reboot the computer:

sudo pacman -Syu

Then run the following command:

sudo pacman -S nvidia-open cuda

Note: if you already have the “nvidia” package installed, you will need to remove it first.

The following command will show whether the graphics card is recognized by the operating system and is currently in use:

nvidia-smi

4. How to install NVIDIA Open on Debian, Kali Linux, Ubuntu, Linux Mint

Update your OS and reboot:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

Then run the following command:

sudo apt install nvidia-open-kernel-dkms nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree ocl-icd-libopencl1 nvidia-cuda-toolkit

Note: At the time of writing, the Kali Linux repositories have NVIDIA driver version 535 – this version still does NOT support the GeForce RTX 50 series. You will need to wait for version 570 to support the latest generation of graphics cards.

5. How to check if Hashcat can use the NVIDIA graphics card on my computer

Run the following command to display information about the devices that Hashcat can use to crack hashes:

hashcat -I

The lines of interest to us are:

CUDA Info:
==========

CUDA.Version.: 12.8

Backend Device ID #1 (Alias: #3)
  Name...........: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU
  Processor(s)...: 60
  Clock..........: 1500
  Memory.Total...: 15850 MB
  Memory.Free....: 15555 MB
  Local.Memory...: 99 KB
  PCI.Addr.BDFe..: 0000:01:00.0

…………………..
…………………..
…………………..

OpenCL Platform ID #2
  Vendor..: NVIDIA Corporation
  Name....: NVIDIA CUDA
  Version.: OpenCL 3.0 CUDA 12.8.97

  Backend Device ID #3 (Alias: #1)
    Type...........: GPU
    Vendor.ID......: 32
    Vendor.........: NVIDIA Corporation
    Name...........: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU
    Version........: OpenCL 3.0 CUDA
    Processor(s)...: 60
    Clock..........: 1500
    Memory.Total...: 15850 MB (limited to 3962 MB allocatable in one block)
    Memory.Free....: 15488 MB
    Local.Memory...: 48 KB
    OpenCL.Version.: OpenCL C 1.2 
    Driver.Version.: 570.144
    PCI.Addr.BDF...: 01:00.0

From this information it follows:

• Hashcat sees and can use CUDA and NVIDIA
• the NVIDIA video card received the platform number 2, and the device has the numbers 1 and 3 (these are two aliases of the same device)

To run the benchmark, run the following command:

hashcat -b

Or if you want to benchmark only a specific video card, then specify the -d option with the device number (in our case, the NVIDIA video card has numbers 1 and 3 – we can choose any of these numbers):

hashcat -b -d 1

Testing the speed of Wi-Fi passwords:

hashcat -m 22000 -b

See also:

• Hashcat: https://en.kali.tools/?p=155
• Hashcat manual: how to use the program for cracking passwords
• Cracking WPA / WPA2 handshakes using GPU on Windows

Conclusion

So, at the time of writing, I managed to configure Hashcat to work with a GeForce RTX 50 series video card on Arch Linux (BlackArch), since the NVIDIA driver version in the repositories of this distribution is 570. For Kali Linux, the above commands are correct, but for Kali Linux to be able to work with GeForce RTX series video cards 50 you need to wait for the video driver to be updated to at least version 570.