I am fairly fluent using Hashcat with all of the different algorithms when a hash is present. My question (after much searching) is how do I attack a simple text file that has been encrypted with something like blowfish or even one of the many listed hashcat algorithms when no hash is evident? In other words if all I have is a small encrypted file, how do I proceed?? Thanks
Hashing is not encryption, and hashcat's focus is on cracking hashes, not breaking encryption.
There is some small overlap between the two with programs which create encrypted files by passing the password through a hash function to derive the encryption key, and a handful of popular non-hash formats are indeed supported by Hashcat (MS Office, Adobe PDF, 7zip, RAR, etc.) But you cannot generically attack encrypted files with Hashcat.