Great open-source utility to recover lost Windows account passwords or to break into a locked machine.
In some cases, you can use special tools that reset your forgotten password (which I’ll write about in my up-coming posts..). but there are cases, where you don’t want to risk harming the system even more, or where you must know the original password- especially if your NTFS file-system is encrypted using EFS. Another case could be where you have a local-profile of a user and you want to be able to log in to it to recover specific settings of the user.
For all those cases you can use this tool called: ophcrack
these are actually a bunch of tools that can be installed on Linux, Windows & Mac. but I want to focus on the Live CD version of the application. the ophcrack team has compiled a complete all-in-one Linux boot CD that automatically loads the tool and starts the cracking process.
- No installation necessary
- No admin password necessary
- All you need is the ability to boot from a CD !
It can crack passwords from a local or remote SAM file of Windows 2000/XP and even Vista!
Use it for troubleshooting and testing purposes only! 
Happy Labor Day Everyone!
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September 3, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Nice one Yaron! Ophcrack was going to be my next article but it seems you beat me to it. It’s a great program, and the Boot CD rocks