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Protect your PC from a password crack

Cyril Roger

Cyril Roger

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Find the key to protect your passwordA Cambridge University researcher whose blog was being hacked apparently managed to find his attacker’s password just by searching in Google. Using a dictionary attack in English and Russian, the researcher simply entered his attacker’s MD5 hash (used by WordPress to store passwords) into Google, which revealed the word “Anthony”, the attacker’s password. This is just another example of how important it is for you to have strong passwords and to make sure you protect them at all times. Check out Elena’s good tip on how to create and remember strong passwords. She also wrote up on how to unveil hidden passwords in web pages, a trick similar to that which the Cambridge University researcher pulled.

We’ve also found a few other applications that allow you to reveal or crack passwords. Ophcrack uses rainbow tables to crack passwords, Password Revealer can show passwords typed in edit boxes, and both Asterisk Key and Asterisk Logger can unmask the password that hides under asterisks. Remember though, try to keep your use of these programs “legal”, ie don’t start trying to break into banking sites or people’s emails. If what your looking for is to recover a lost password, check out our list of top password recovery tools.

Cyril Roger

Cyril Roger

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