Thursday, February 02, 2006

Well, how can it be possible?

I mean, last night I had a strange experience about computer systems. I am not very good at this, but if this is what someone like me can do, what else will someone that knows be able to do?

Someone asked me how to guess the password of the administrator user of a Windows XP system. This surprised me because I thought that people does not use to forget their passwords…jajaja! So I decided to help to find the best solution.

I found in the internet the article of someone that has had the same case, and the way that guy solved. This blog says that there were some utilities that helps to reset the password of the administrator, and recommended the Austrumi software. It is a Linux utility, which reset that password and set it to empty. So, I downloaded the .iso image and followed the steps that blog told. In about three minutes, I had the problem solved.

And this night I found that there are some other choices, like the following: start the pc in safe mode; this opens a list of the administrators users that can make login in the machine. Then select the default administrator (that has the password in blank) and then, open the administrative tool to manage users and groups. Finally change the password of the user that was the one you were trying to hack.

Yes, I know that perhaps this is casual  (because I don´t know how were the users created and so on...), but I insist, if this is what someone like me can do, what else will someone that really knows be able to do?

And of course, why are we so worried about securing our applications having bugs like this?

Hope this helps people that use to forget their passwords…