Logon to any password protected Windows machine without knowing the password
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Today we will show you proof of concept on how you can log on to any password protected Windows machine, without knowing the password at all. I am sure you have heard of utilities which will "reset" or "recover the Windows login password for you, but this is way cooler than that, this utility will not write or reset anything to the hard drive. After you are done, on the next reboot the machine will retain its original password. There is no "reset" or lengthy recovery involved. The 5 step process is so easy that after you have seen this, you will be shaking your head
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We are going to demonstrate this process on a Windows XP service pack 3 machine, but the process is essentially exactly the same for other versions of Windows such as Windows 7, Vista, Windows Server 2003 or even Windows 2000 workstation and server.
Most of the magic will be done by a nifty utility from Kryptos logic called Kon-Boot, which you can download from its web page located athttp://www.piotrbania.com/all/kon-boot/. This same utility can also be used to log on to Linux systems, but that is outside the scope of this article, we will concentrate only on Windows.
You will need to download the .iso file from the Kon-Boot website and burn it to a CD. If you need instructions on how to burn a CD from an iso image using a free tool, you can read up on it on our article here. Next, make sure that the BIOS is set to boot from the CD drive. With the CD in the drive, boot the machine
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Step1:
- After the machine boots from the CD, you will see the splash screen as shown on the left hand side. Simply hit enter to continue
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Step 2:
- After hitting enter in the previous step, you will find this second splash screen. This is important as as soon as you hit enter on this screen, you will be taken to the next step, which is booting Windows, there are no other steps to configure here. In a few minutes, the normal Windows boot menu will appear, just proceed as you normally do in your normal logon sequence to Windows
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Step 3:
- On Windows Logon screen, fill in the name of the user whom you want to log on as, leave the password blank and hit enter
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Step 4:
- Olla! you are logged in! and what's the coolest thing, you have not reset the password for the account at all. It simply let you in because it interacted with the kernel directly using Linux. No alteration was done to any hard drive content at all during the process of logging in.
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Step 5:
- Remove the CD from the drive, and reboot. Your machine will now present you the normal ctrl+alt+del screen like it always use to, try logging on with the username we tried before with the blank password! The blank password will not work, you can only get in if you knew what the right password was..this demonstrates that the user password was never reset, it still is what it use to be.
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As you can see that this nifty little cd can be of many uses, you do not need to reinstall or repair Windows if you have forgotten your password. If you are locked out, you can use this to log in as well. It also brings raises a question on Windows security. Once again, this method is exceptionally fast and does not actually reset the password. If you have for some reason the need to "recover" and "reveal" a user's password, you can use the tutorial I wrote earlier here and it will actually show you what the password is.
If the method I described above, is being used to gain unauthorized access to then there are really only two ways of protecting against such an intrusion:
1. Block Physical access to the machine or prevent users from hooking in USB devices or booting from CD ROMs and floppies
2. Encrypt your sensitive data. We will cover a step by step article on how to use encryption to protect your data in a forthcoming article
Hopefully this has been informative for you. If you have any further questions, please do leave us a comment or contact us through the Contact Us link on this web site.
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