Windows Password Cracking

I think most people have forgotten or lost their log in password for their Windows machine at one time or another. It is not a fun ordeal and can be a real pain in the neck if you don’t know exactly what to do. Unless you are a super programmer, you probably won’t get anywhere by accessing your computer via the command prompt and trying to find your stored password despite a few myths to the contrary.
Windows Vista in particular secures their passwords a bit better than that.

They are by no means undiscoverable. They can be cracked. Windows password recovery is a subject, that Microsoft doesn’t like to discuss, so you will be on your own mostly when it comes to windows password recovery. There is a cornucopia of information on the internet, but you have to be careful who to trust as you will quickly find out when searching for a reliable and easy password recovery method. If you are not very careful where you get your information and software from to handle your lost password recovery, you may end up with a virus, mal ware or even end up destroying all of your computer’s stored data.

How secure is your version of windows vista
The level of security may depend greatly on what version of Windows Vista you purchased. Windows Vista Ultimate and Premium editions are known to have superior encryption technology in the form of what is called “BitLocker Drive Encryption”. There has even been some buzz on the internet that BitLocker contains a back door that law enforcement agencies can use to access the encrypted data, but these allegations have been strongly denied by Microsoft. There are three modes of security for Bitlocker. Two of the three modes require a special cryptographic hardware chip, while the third requires a USB device to be used as a startup key for the computer.

Possible problems with windows vista premium and ultimate:

Here is a shortlist of possible problems and solutions for computers running windows Vista Premium or Ultimate editions and Bitlocker Drive Encryption:

Problems:

1. Bitlocker detects a possible security threat at startup.
2. Startup key is lost or damaged.
3. Power supply issue and you transfer information to another drive.

All three of the above situations will lock you out of your computer if it is using BitLocker. To be able to regain access you will have to provide the BitLocker recovery password. If you are moving the drive to another machine, the new machine will need to have BitLocker already installed and you will need the password for the transient drive to be able to access the drive on the new machine.

What to do if you loose the password for BitLocker:
When you first set up your computer with BitLocker, you were asked where to save a backup copy of a 48-digit recovery password. Without that, you could be permanently locked out of the drive. Be sure you make more than one backup and hide them well to be sure you don’t ever loose access to your drive!

What about Windows Vista Home Basic Edition?
As an educational experiment the author of this article tried to recover the password without a recovery disc or easy recovery software. I couldn’t do it within a single day anyway. First I tried to just find the password located in a file. I had read that they were stored in either the SAM file or the syskey within the config directory (C:\Windows\System32\config). At first I didn’t see the files. Then I realized that Windows will hide system folders from view and looked for a way to show hidden files, which can be done by going to the control panel, clicking on “folder options”, pick the “view” tab and under “advanced settings”, click “show hidden files and folders”.

Then I was able to see the files in the aforementioned directory. But I never did figure out how to find the password in the files and assume it was a hash anyway. So if you can not figure out a password hash, there is no point in going any further. After reading several articles on the internet, I figured there has to be an easier approach. Before I reveal the secret, its worth mentioning that I had also read that you can reset the password by holding down F8 and entering “Safe Mode” on your computer. I quickly found out that the only way that can be done is if you had already made a password recovery disc, which I had not. So that was out of the question.

The solution:
After an exhaustive search of my own on how to recover a regular Windows Vista Home Basic administration password, I found that the only method I would every recommend (to a friend anyway) is to use a third party software application such as can be found at www.lastbit.com. All other approaches were a huge waste of my time. FYI: I am a web designer not a computer programmer or Windows security specialist, so this should give the average computer user an idea of what you will go through when trying to recover a lost windows password. Learn from my mistakes and go straight for the easy recovery software!

– Olga Kosheleva
http://lastbit.com