May 30th, 2008
Either choose strong passwords, or don't bother with a password at all
Earlier today I downloaded the latest Live CD for Ophcrack, the Windows password cracker, and tried it out on a Vista install to see how good of a password buster it is.
Conclusion: Either choose strong passwords, or don’t bother with a password at all.
Here’s the test - I took a virtual PC that uses Windows Vista that I’ve been sharing with a few friends (Fred, Barney, Betty and Wilma … you might know them) and put this up against the Live CD to see how many passwords I could recover.
The process went something like this:
- Download Ophcrack Live CD
- Burn a CD (although I didn’t need to do this - I just booted the virtual machine off the .ISO file)
- Let Ophcrack do its stuff
Gallery here
The results were quite staggering. In less than 50 seconds three weak passwords had been recovered (shame on you pcdoc, Fred and Betty … I’m not letting you on my systems again). However, two much longer and more complex passwords (one consisting of alphanumeric characters, the other more complex) survived.
You have been warned …
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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