When you are locked out of a Windows computer, a Windows password recovery tool will help you reset or remove the password. To get started, you need to install Windows Password Recovery Tool software to another Windows or Mac computer that you can access to and create a boot disk.
This tool requires physical access of course, and there are many things you can do once you have physical access, but this peaked my curiosity. The tool in question: Obviously the magic to this piece of hardware is what's contained on it, and if that is true, any usb key could be used to accomplish the same job. I know there are software like Katana and the like that can do similar things. My question is, does anyone know what this could be running to make this happen? Is it rubber ducky-like or something else?
I'm a security professional and penetration tester by trade, but no administrative windows expert and most of my work is done remotely, so I put this out to the on-site guys and the windows experts. I'm not looking to knock off the product, in fact, I think quite the opposite, its a cool piece of kit and may purchase one for kicks. Just curious if anyone knows whats going on behind the curtain. Resetting a windows password is not equivalent to recovering a windows password. Resetting a password The password can be reset by booting to another operating system and editing the registry hive.
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This is trivial, and there are many tools which can do it, such as Trinity Recovery Kit. I suspect this USB stick just boots to a version of Linux and runs a few scripts. In summary: Just write blank password entries into the SAM (which is basically just stored in the registry protected by an ACL so only SYSTEM can access it). However resetting a windows password denies access to EFS encrypted files and DPAPI encrypted data, since the keys for these are encrypted using a KEK derived from the password.
When the user changes their password, they are re-encrypted with the new KEK. Access to EFS and DPAPI resources is lost even if the administrator resets the password. Recovering a password A recovered password allows continued access to EFS and DPAPI protected resources. In addition, it may give access to additional resources (e.g.
It may be a domain logon). To recover the password you need a tool like John the Ripper, Lopht or HashCat. Which could also run off a USB stick. Extract the hashes from the SAM, feed them to a cracking program.
Then reboot and log in with recovered passwords. The kickstarter page actually gives away the method: Using the key you can boot the PC into a special admin mode that allows you to view all of the user accounts and reset any password. Quickly regain control of the PC and get back to work. Basically you reboot the PC with a custom OS located on the USB flash drive itself; from that OS, the relevant files on the disk are modified. The USB device is nothing special: it is just a normal USB flash drive; the 'added value' of this device is purely aesthetic.
Downloadable boot images which can do the same thing from a 'normal' USB flash drive can be obtained from various places, e.g. This password reset method will fail if any of the following holds:. The boot-on-USB option was deactivated in the BIOS, and a BIOS password was set to prevent reactivation (of course, some BIOS accept 'default passwords', and a BIOS password can be cleared by removing the CMOS battery, which is doable with physical access and a screwdriver). The operating system uses disk encryption and requires a password upon boot - not just as a verification, but because the encryption key is derived from the password ( can do that). Also, as @Ben explains, a password reset is not recovery: that which was encrypted with a key derived from the old password remains inaccessible.
There have been Windows password reset CDs for some years that let you do this. You can put a slightly modified image on a bootable USB stick. I presume this key simply packages existing software in a pre-packaged key. The reset CDs do NOT work if the disk is encrypted. All security professionals know that a non-encrypted disk is not safe against an attacker with physical access. Two popular boot CDs work in completely different ways: - This is actually a bootable Linux system, which can read the Windows file system, and reset a password hash. It works most of the time, but the support for the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) - where Windows stores password hashes - is not perfect.
So sometimes it just doesn't work, and risks corrupting the SAM. This is free. This boots the Windows system that is password protected, but hot patches it to disable asking you for a password - you just get logged in as administrator automatically. In my experience it is more reliable than the other tool.
It is not free, but is quite cheap. There may be other approaches, in particular based on but I'm not familiar with them. I bet the use 'Ultimate Boot CD running BartPE' there was a live cd on the net some time ago this did let you do all these operations. I am sure it will not decrypt the password hash on the fly. It will rather exchange that hash with an own generated. Pasword reset like.
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And will have the same effect. Similar to this one. This windows live cd was also only some hundred mb. And you could start it also while pc was locked, it made a new start button pop out and gave you access to everything through this.
How to Check a Drive’s File System RELATED: So how do you know if your USB drive is? You don’t need to do anything special with Disk Utility–just plug in your USB drive and open the Finder. Right-click or Control-click the drive’s icon in the Finder’s sidebar (or on your desktop) and select “Get Info.” You’ll see the drive’s file system displayed to the right of “Format” under the General heading. In the screenshot below, the drive is formatted with the exFAT file system. How to Format a Drive on a Mac If you want to use a different file system on your USB drive, you’ll need to “format” it.
Again, formatting a drive will erase it completely, so make sure you have everything backed up that you want to keep. To format a drive on a Mac, you’ll need the built-in Disk Utility application. Press Command+Space to open the Spotlight search dialog, type “Disk Utility”, and press “Enter” to launch the app. You can also open a Finder window, select “Applications” in the sidebar, and head to Utilities Disk Utility.
Your connected drives will appear under “External” in the Disk Utility’s sidebar. Select the drive by clicking its name. Click the “Erase” button after selecting the entire drive to erase the entire drive and create a single partition on it. You’ll be asked to provide a name for the disk, which will appear and identify the disk when you connect it to a Mac, PC, or another device. You’ll need to choose between several file systems: RELATED:.
OS X Extended (Journaled): This is the default, but it’s only natively supported on Macs. It’s also known as HFS+. This file system is necessary if you plan on using the drive for Time Machine backups–otherwise, you’ll want to use exFAT for maximum compatibility. OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled): On a case-sensitive file system, “file” is different from “File”. By default, Mac OS X doesn’t use a case-sensitive file system.
This option exists because it matches the traditional behavior of UNIX and some people might need it–don’t select this unless you know you need it for some reason. OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted): This is the same as the standard OS X Extended file system, but with encryption. You’ll have to enter a password, and you’ll need to provide that password whenever you connect your drive to your Mac.
OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted): This is the same as the standard OS X Extended (Case-senstiive) file system, but with encryption. MS-DOS (FAT): This is the most widely compatible file system, but it has some limitations–for example, files can only be 4GB or less in size each. Avoid this file system unless you have a device that requires FAT32. ExFAT:, but doesn’t have the limitations. You should use this file system if you may share the drive with Windows PCs and other devices like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. ExFAT is the ideal cross-platform file system. It’s not natively supported on many Linux distributions, but you can. For external drives, it almost always makes sense to format in ExFAT, unless you’re using the drive for Time Machine.
RELATED: You’ll also be asked to choose between a partition scheme: GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Record, or Apple Partition Map. Both also work with Windows PCs. APM is an older, Mac-only partition scheme. This choice doesn’t really matter if you don’t plan on booting from the drive. If in doubt, just select the default GUID Partition Map (GPT) scheme. Avoid the Mac-only Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme.
Click the “Erase” button when you’re done and Disk Utility will format your disk with the settings you specified. This will erase all the files on the drive! You’re now done–be sure to eject the disk before you remove it from your Mac. You can do this by clicking the eject icon to the right of the disk in the Finder or Disk Utility windows. You can also right-click or Option-click the drive in Finder or on your desktop and select the “Eject” option.
Macs do have some limited support for other file systems–for example, Macs can read files on Windows-formatted NTFS volumes, but. Macs don’t have an integrated way to format partitions with NTFS, either. Use exFAT for excellent compatibility with Windows without FAT32’s limitations.