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TUTORIAL - How to hack the administrator password in Windows XP!

Have you ever wondered how to retrieve the Windows admin password for a computer? I’ll try to be brief and explain how to do just that without using too many advanced techniques. Of course they are many ways of doing this, so I’ll outline what I find easy. Remember that this is only for educational purposes, don’t try to hack someone’s computer (unless you really need to…). Also remember that you need physical access to the computer and some time. This tutorial is for Windows XP, not sure what else it will work for.

Tools you will need:

• 1GB or bigger USB key (or a CD and CD burner)
• Another any size USB key
• Any distribution of Linux. I used Pendrive Linux and a USB key but any combination will work.
• A computer on which to do all the installing and other work
• The computer for which you want to retrieve the password
• Rainbow table program Ophcrack
• A 700MB rainbow table (if the password is more complex you can use a bigger one. More on that a bit later)

I will write this tutorial as if you are using Pendrive Linux and USB, but you can easily port this method to CD/DVD or other variants. Below is the step by step tutorial on what exactly you need to do.

• Format your USB stick and set the filesystem to FAT32 while formattting. If the Linux won’t work with FAT32 try FAT.
• Download Pendrive Linux from HERE
• Using Winrar or another extraction program, extract the contents of Pendrive Linux into the root of your newly formatted USB drive
• When it finishes extracting, open the USB directory, and open the file makeboot.dat. This will make your USB drive bootable
• Your USB is ready for booting. Plug it into the computer you want to find the password for. Reboot/Start the computer
• When booting, make sure you select USB as the boot device. This is different for every BIOS, so you will just have to figure it out yourself. It’s sometimes F9, F8, or Del key, but it could by something else
• Wait for Pendrive linux to finish booting. You will arrive at the main screen.
• Open the window that allows you to see all storage devices on the computer. One of the them will be the hard drive, open it and navigate to C:\Windows\system32\config/
• Stick your other USB key into the computer, and copy all the files from this directory onto another directoy on your USB key. You can ignore the systemprofile directory, you don’t need it.
• Just to be safe and make sure you have the files you need, you can also copy the contents of C:\Windows\repair to another folder on your USB Key. This is just in case the other files don’t work, but most likely they will.

OK, you are now finished with copying the system files. What’s stored in the /config/ directory is all the passwords that are saved on the current computer, but they are encrypted, so we need a way of decrypting them. It would take forever to bruteforce, so what we will use is Rainbow Tables. These are pregenerated hashes, so what the computer will do is check the hashed version of the password from the file and compare it with the table. Of course, the bigger the table the more possibilities it has, and also it’s faster. Now it’s password-cracking time

• Download Ophcrack. It will allow us to crack the passwords.
• Download this 700MB rainbow table
• If the password is not alpha-numeric and contains special characters, you will need a bigger table. What I recommend is to download a 35 GB rainbow table from a torrent. The torrent is available from HERE. Make sure you download the right now, or otherwise that’s a lot of bandwidth wasted!
• Open up Opcrack and click the Tables icon. Point to your tables directory and click Install
• Click the Load icon, and select “Encrypted SAM”. Now point the tree view to the directory to which you dumped all the files from the system32\config directory
• Click crack and wait a little. If the passwords are complicated it might take longer. After it finishes, it presents you with all the passwords stored for this computer!

If it didn’t work, it might be because you are using the alphanumeric table and the password has non alphanumeric characters. If you Download the 35 GB table there is a much higher chance you will be able to crack the password! Also, it might be possible that the passwords are salted, in which I think you are out of luck, since a salt makes it really hard to decrypt the hash. Still, try the method and see what you come up with! You now have administrator access to the machine! I hope you enjoyed reading, and that you learned something. Also, remember that this is for educational purposes only, don’t use it for criminal activities! Also, sorry for no pics, maybe I”ll come up with some a bit later!

Tags: hack, tutorial, windows

New monitor obtained - Samsung SyncMaster 245B

I have just received my new Samsung SyncMaster 245B along with another Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB to complement my 750GB version. This new monitor has a max native resolution of 1920×1200 giving me tons of desktop space. Some pictures are below.

I am a bit skeptical as to the other 2 monitors, since I don’t think I really need three, and 2 would probably be enough. For my graphics adapter, I have 2 x evga 7800 GTX KO, which gives me a total of 4 DVI ports, so you would think that having 3 monitors is not a problem. Well, its not, until you come to the conclusion that you want each monitor to be a separate entity, meaning a separate background and icons, because now, my 20″ and 17″ are acting as one big display, and maximizing any window inside these monitors makes the window span across both monitors, making it pretty annoying. I am using the latest Nvidia drivers, and my only options are: single display, clone, extend horizontally and extend vertically. Why is there no option to make them 2 sepearate monitors? That would really be useful and I don’t see why the graphics card is not able to do that. Also, I’m using a program called UltraMon to manage my displays, but I can’t figure out how to split the monitors. Please, if any of you have any ideas on how to solve this, leave a comment. Thanks a lot. Now some images.

Tags: monitor, samsung

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750GB Hard Drive Received

YAY, I just received my new shiny Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750GB Hard Drive. I ordered it from overclockers.co.uk, and I was kind of scared because I read a lot of reviews online saying that overclockers are uber-crap. But whatever, I decided to order to test it out. I ordered 29th March, paying with credit card online in their shop. I pay, and then I see the order of my status as “Security Verification”. Ok, security verification, fine…. I check the next day and still security verification, WTF? I send them an email (on Monday) and they reply in a couple of hours saying that my hard drive is ready for shipping tomorrow. So I’m asking myself, “tomorrow?”. But, its Monday, why can’t you just send it on Monday, its the first day of the week, so again, WTF. The other part is that overclockers had a service to pick the date of delivery, so I picked Thursday, and surprise surprise, it came today, on Friday. This is international shipping, but still, they should compensate for the delays in their online form. I’m attaching some pictures of the unpacking. As of now, the drive is still formatting, and is at 23%.

Also, I will soon write an article about my previous hard drive that I ordered and had to send back, it was a Samsung 750GB F1.

Tags: harddrive, HDD, seagate

Rearranged computer setup

Hello all. I just rearranged my computer desk so that everything is nice and dandy for the arrival of my new 24″ Samsung monitor. Here are some pics.

Tags: Computers, Technology

New monitor - Samsung 245B

Hey!!

I have just ordered myself a new monitor, the Samsung 245B.

This will be an addition to 2 other monitors I already have, the 204B and the 172B. I have been overall very happy with the quality of Samsung monitors, the 172B, I have had for about 7 years now and its still working great as an MSN screen :).

Keep tuned for when I receive my new 24 inch monitor, I’ll try to write a short review then.

Tags: 245B, monitor, samsung