Password Recovery -- pwrecover.com

How to Maintain Secure Passwords

pwrecover — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:48:52 +0000

Here’s a great way to maintain your secure passwords. Check out the link for full details!

The basic premise of a password is that it is a SECRET. No one else should know your passwords. And yes, I said passwordS plural, with an “S” on the end. Every password you have for every site that you deem important should be different. And your throwaway password should be different from all of those. I can already hear the gnashing of teeth after that last sentence, “remembering all of those passwords is impossible! I’ll forget them all and be locked out of everything!”. SILENCE PEASANTS! The Emperor will show you the way.The secret to maintaining secure passwords and still being able to remember them all is a Password Schema.

To create a Password Schema you first choose a five word phrase, our example will be “The Best Five Word Phrase”. Now we head on over to the “Leet” Speak Translator and convert that phrase into letters, numbers, and symbols. What I get for our example phrase is “7|-|3 b3$7 pH1\/3 \/\/0rD p|-|r4$3″. Some of those symbols aren’t valid password characters, so we will have to clean it up a bit. The final result is “7H3 b3$7 pH1V3 W0rD pHr@$3″. This is the basis for every password we are going to make. This phrase is what you can write down. Ideally you only write down the unconverted phrase, but if you aren’t familiar with “Leet” speak conversions you can safely write down the converted phrase.

Generating the perfect password

pwrecover — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:02:15 +0000

Here’s another method for creating a decent password that I stumbled across today.

Essentially, the compound password is a juxtaposition of two simple words, with their letters alternating. For example, dcoagt is a compound password. Can you see the two words in there? How about now: dcoagt . The two words in the compound password are “cat” and “dog”. To generate the password, “cat” is “inserted” into “dog”. But what of memorability? To the unenlightened, this looks like randomly generated, hard to remember ASCII

text. But, remember, this is nothing more than the juxtaposition of two words.

Easy way to remember your passwords

pwrecover — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:10:13 +0000

I ran across this article which is a nice way to hide your passwords in plain sight. Enjoy!

IT Dude: “The password to log in to your new PC is r4eo1ss89″
User: ”Um. Okay. But how will I remember that?”
IT Dude: ”Not my problem.”
User: ”Okay, but there’s no way I can remember that. I’ll have to write it down”
IT Dude: “If you write it down, it’s no longer secure - if someone finds it, they’ll have access to your machine. Do not write it down!”
User: “But…but if I can’t write it down, and I can’t remember it, what can I do?”
IT Dude: “Not my problem.”

Cool, free utility for resetting a password

pwrecover — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:22:14 +0000

I ran accross this utility when trying to log in to a machine I had got off Craigslist. I didn’t care what the old password was, but I didn’t have the XP installation disks so I needed to get it. This site pointed me to a utility that enabled you to boot off a CD and reset the password of any user to whatever you wanted. I found that just setting it to * (which makes there not be a password) was the most reliable.

Caution: If used on users that have EFS encrypted files, and the system is XP or later service packs on W2K, all encrypted files for that user will be UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password again!

Download links:

cd060213.zip (~3MB) - Bootable CD image with newer drivers

bd050303.zip (~1.1MB) - Bootdisk image, date 050303.

sc050303.zip(~1.4MB) - SCSI-drivers (050303) (only use newest drivers with newest bootdisk, this one works with bd050303)

To write these images to a floppy disk you’ll need RawWrite2 which is included in the Bootdisk image download. To create the CD you just need to use your favorite CD burning program and burn the .ISO file to CD.

Truecrypt

pwrecover — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:22:03 +0000

This software isn’t necessarily for recovering passwords, but it’s a really great piece of software. With Truecrypt you can create a flat file and mount it as a drive letter. This file is encrypted and you can even create a hidden volume within a Truecrypt volume which means you could keep all your really secretive stuff, like passwords, in that file. On the downside, if you ever had to recover that password, you’re screwed because the encryption is incredibly strong. However, it’s all free!

XP Live CD

pwrecover — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:41:20 +0000

Here is a utility that is a little more than just a password recovery tool. With this CD you not only change the password for your Windows 2000, WinXP, or Windows 2003 box, but you can copy files off it, scan for viruses or back it up.

This definately isn’t the cheapest solution, but it’s another option if you won’t want to spend the time building this yourself with BartPE.

Password Unmask 2.0

pwrecover — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 23:29:02 +0000

Here is a freeware utility that didn’t work on everything I tested it on, but it did work on some. Since it’s free and a very small download, then I don’t see that as a huge problem.

You can find this app at http://www.alpinesnow.com/pwu.shtml

File this under, free and could come in handy!

More password management

pwrecover — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:20:01 +0000

But this time it’s free due to the open source community! Password Safe is a small app that stores your critical passwords using Blowfish encryption. With one master password, you can store all of your critical passwords to keep them out of the wrong hands.

There is also a Pocket PC version in the works and the regular version comes in several different languages. Remember, you won’t need Password Recovery if you keep it secure and safe in the first place!

Prevent the need for password recovery!

pwrecover — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 04:44:03 +0000

Similar to Roboform, but this is a standalone app. My Password Manager has a variety of features, here are a few:

Logins and passwords for websites.
Access codes to e-mail accounts.
Cellular phone PIN codes.
Access codes to computer accounts.
Passwords for programs (For example ICQ and Outlook).
Passwords for files (For example Excel and Word files).

Pricing starts at $24.95 for a personal license and offers free technical support via e-mail.

www.password-changer.com

pwrecover — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 04:43:13 +0000

Active@ Password Changer�is a useful utility which helps in changing forgotten administrator system password and allowing access to Windows XP, 2003, 2000 or NT operating systems. That’s directly from their site.

This tool enables you to boot from a floppy, CD, or a USB flash drive to recover a password on an administrator’s account or user account. You also have the ability to reset the “User is disabled” flag among other other account flags. Pricing starts at $40 for a single license, $100 for 10, and $499 for Unlimited.