Hashcat is the self-proclaimed world's fastest password recovery tool. It had a proprietary code base until 2015, but is now released as free software. Versions are available for Linux, OS X, and Windows and can come in CPU-based or GPU-based variants. Examples of hashcat-supported hashing algorithms are Microsoft LM hashes, MD4, MD5, SHA-family, Unix Crypt formats, MySQL, and Cisco PIX.
Hashcat has made its way into the news many times for the optimizations and flaws discovered by its creator, which were exploited in subsequent hashcat releases. (For example, the flaw in 1Password's password manager hashing scheme.)[1]
1