Ophcrack

(This will be my first post on a hacking tool.) Passwords, as we know, are one of the many security measures that everyone can implement. In fact, passwords are so common that almost all, if not all, accounts use passwords. However, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Passwords can be one of these weak links which compromise security. Today, I will be showing you how to use ophcrack, a password cracking distrubution. Firstly, how does it work? Well, ophcrack has the ability to use two different types of password attacks- rainbow tables and brute-force attacks. To find out how these work, please view my next post. Heres the video tutorial. Oh, and ophcrack comes in two 'modes', the live, bootable version and the GUI version. This tutorial is on the GUI one. The tutorial for the bootable one will come out later in another of my posts. Meanwhile, take a look at the instructions too! :DD



Instructions:

1) Download the GUI program by going to http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/download.php?type=ophcrack , then clicking on windows.

2)After finishing the download, go to the directory where you downloaded ophcrack and double click on the installer.

3) Follow the instructions in the installler, but DO NOT check any of the boxes when ophcrack asks you to download the tables. If you do, the installer will screw the thing up quite badly (as in the rainbow tables, not the program), so just install the ophcrack program will do.

4)Go to  http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/tables.php   and select the types of tables you want, and according to your operating system. Mine is Windows XP, so I'll choose the biggest free tables for xp. For windows 7 users, please get the vista tables, they are the same.

5) Download the tables which are in a zip file. Extract the file inside to the desktop or some other directory.

6) Open up the ophcrack program. Click on 'Load', then 'Local SAM'. Wait for a couple of seconds until the new command prompt screen closes, then continue to step 7.

7) Click on 'Tables', then click on the type of table you downloaded. For e.g., I downloaded the xp free small tables, so I click on 'XP free small'. Do this step according to the type of table you download (IMPORTANT).

8) Then click ok and close the tables window. You should see a jumble of letters and numbers in one of the columns in the ophcrack window and also the name of the tables with 'on disk' beside it at the bottom of the ophcrack window.

9) Finally, click 'crack' and ophcrack will begin to crack the passwords. When it's done it will show you all the passwords if they are found and display 'Not found' for usernames which ophcrack cannot find.


IF THERE ARE ANY PROBLEMS PLEASE COMMENT!  :D