This guest post was written by Blair Mathis from LaptopLogic.com – your premier source for the latest laptop software news and best laptop accessories.
Computer passwords are like locks on doors – they keep honest people honest. If someone wishes to gain access to your laptop or computer, a simple login password will not stop them. Most computer users do not realize how simple it is to access the login password for a computer, and end up leaving vulnerable data on their computer, unencrypted and easy to access.
When you’re on another user account, Mac OS X has some restrictions as to what you can do to system files, and you have to confirm everything on the system level with your administrator password or the root password. The ability to crack passwords is an essential skill to both the hacker and the forensic investigator, the latter needing to hack passwords for accessing the suspect's system, hard drive, email account, etc. Although some passwords are very easy to crack, some are very difficult.
Are you curious how easy it is for someone to gain access to your computer? If so, read on to see the technique one might use to figure out your computer password.
Windows
![Crack Crack](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126027783/635884297.jpg)
Windows is still the most popular operating system, and the method used to discover the login password is the easiest. The program used is called Ophcrack, and it is free. Ophcrack is based on Slackware, and uses rainbow tables to solve passwords up to 14 characters in length. The time required to solve a password? Generally 10 seconds. The expertise needed? None.
Simply download the Ophcrack ISO and burn it to a CD (or load it onto a USB drive via UNetbootin). Insert the CD into a machine you would like to gain access to, then press and hold the power button until the computer shuts down. Turn the computer back on and enter BIOS at startup. Change the boot sequence to CD before HDD, then save and exit.
The computer will restart and Ophcrack will be loaded. Sit back and watch as it does all the work for your. Write down the password it gives you, remove the disc, restart the computer, and log in as if it were you own machine.
Mac
The second most popular operating system, OS X is no safer when it comes to password cracking then Windows.
The second most popular operating system, OS X is no safer when it comes to password cracking then Windows.
The easiest method would be to use Ophcrack on this, also, as it works with Mac and Linux in addition to Windows. However, there are other methods that can be used, as demonstrated below.
If the Mac runs OS X 10.4, then you only need the installation CD. Insert it into the computer, reboot. When it starts up, select UTILITIES > RESET PASSWORD. Choose a new password and then use that to log in.
If the Mac runs OS X 10.5, restart the computer and press COMMAND + S. When at the prompt, type:
fsck -fy
mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
dscl . -passwd /Users/UserName newpassword
That’s it. Now that the password is reset, you can login.
Linux
Finally, there is Linux, an operating system quickly gaining popularity in mainstream, but not so common you’re likely to come across it. Though Mac and Linux are both based on Unix, it is easier to change the password in Linux than it is OS X.
Finally, there is Linux, an operating system quickly gaining popularity in mainstream, but not so common you’re likely to come across it. Though Mac and Linux are both based on Unix, it is easier to change the password in Linux than it is OS X.
To change the password, turn on the computer and press the ESC key when GRUB appears. Scroll down and highlight ‘Recovery Mode’ and press the ‘B’ key; this will cause you to enter ‘Single User Mode’.
You’re now at the prompt, and logged in as ‘root’ by default. Type ‘passwd’ and then choose a new password. This will change the root password to whatever you enter. If you’re interested in only gaining access to a single account on the system, however, then type ‘passwd username’ replacing ‘username’ with the login name for the account you would like to alter the password for.
Conclusion
There you have it – that is how simple it is for someone to hack your password. It requires no technical skills, no laborious tasks, only simple words or programs. The moral of the story? Encrypt your data to keep it safe. Don’t use only a password, but actually encryption, such as Blowfish or AES-128. There are a number of programs that can do this – TrueCrypt for Windows, or the native encryption found on Ubuntu, creating a disk image in Mac, etc.
The primary goal of cRARk is toThere you have it – that is how simple it is for someone to hack your password. It requires no technical skills, no laborious tasks, only simple words or programs. The moral of the story? Encrypt your data to keep it safe. Don’t use only a password, but actually encryption, such as Blowfish or AES-128. There are a number of programs that can do this – TrueCrypt for Windows, or the native encryption found on Ubuntu, creating a disk image in Mac, etc.
- recover your forgotten password on RAR archives.
Any Rar/WinRar versions 2.x-5.x are supported.
cRARk is the tool for professionals, it uses command-line interface, has no GUI.
cRARk is the freeware utility for Win32/64, Linux, Mac OS.
Features and limitations
Advantages of cRARk are:
Crack Password Mac Os
- Absolutely free
- All RAR versions support, including the latest RAR 5.x
- One of the fastest RAR password recovery software, with the optimization for latest x86 instructions: AVX2, AVX, XOP, AES-NI, SHA extensions for Intel and AMD processors
- Support of GPU password recovery on NVIDIA and AMD GPUs using CUDA and OpenCL technologies
- Multi-volume, self-extracting, encrypted header archives support
- Unique PDL language which is extremely efficient if user remembers any information about a forgotten password
- Any (European) language support with native Unicode implementation
- Portability (Windows, Linux, Mac OS versions are available)
- No GUI, pause/resume feature etc
- No multi-core support, only one CPU or GPU is used
- Password length is limited to 28 symbols
RAR security overview
RAR/WinRAR archiver version 2.x used its proprietary, but rather strong encryption algorithm. At least no RAR 2.0 attacks were known except brute force for password recovery.
Crack Mac Login Password
Starting from version 3.0, RAR has been using a strong AES algorithm, which also doesn't allow any attacks more effectivethan the brute force. Besides, the key derivation function uses more than 70000 SHA-1 transformations and brute force rate on modern CPU is very low,only several hundreds of passwords per second.
RAR 5.0 encryption is quite the same, using PBKDF2 key derivation with SHA-256 hash and the rate is even slower (in 25-100% on differenthardware comparing to RAR 3.0). This means that RAR password encryption is one of the strongest between popular encryption systems in the context of brute force rate.