There Is Such A Thing As "Too Easy"

Let me pose a hypothetical situation to you. Let's say your significant other passed away suddenly (sad, I know, but bear with me), and that person did both of your taxes, paid the bills, and other important tasks. That person was also the administrator to the computer with all those files that you will need... but it is password protected and you don't know what it is. You have tried and failed many times to guess what the password could be; the dog's name, kid's name, your name, etc., but nothing works. What are your options?

The majority of people would either take it to a computer shop to see if they can unlock it, or accept defeat and admit to themselves that all that data would be forever lost. But there is a third option, and it scares me.

The scenario above isn't really a hypothetical situation, as it happened to a coworker of mine fairly recently. Her husband passed away very suddenly, and he was the admin to the Windows 7 computer which was password protected. After getting a friend and coworker of hers to try to help and paying $30 for a password recovery program that didn't work, she came to me for help. Admittedly, I have never had to crack a password before, so this was uncharted territory for me. I started doing some research online. and found that there are a plethora of programs that say it will recover the password... for a fee. I will do my best to exhaust all free avenues before paying for something (I'm cheap, what can I say?), so I started looking for other ways to break a password. I didn't have to look far.

The first program I found, was essentially a password finder. It was a program you ran before Windows loads that will peer into the Windows files and find the password for the users on that system. The only caveat to that program was it would not work for passwords over 14 characters. Unfortunately, it was unable to find any password on the computer. Therefore, the search continued...

Program number two was slightly different. The first program was designed to find out what the password was, but this program.... well, it simply deleted the password. And best/worst of all, it worked! Within 2 minutes, I had the computer boot to CD, followed the directions, and deleted the administrator password to that machine.

Let that sink in for a second. A free program found online allowed me to delete the administrator password on a computer that is not mine.

I'm torn. On one hand, I'm glad I was able to help my coworker by getting her computer unlocked. On the other hand, that method is just way too easy to do, even for those with no computer skills. If you can read and follow directions, you can take control of any computer you can get your hands on.

I'm serious! It was just that easy! If you can see, and know the answer to the prompts in this screenshot...

Click to enlarge

... then congratulations my friend, you can now break in to any computer. And this terrifies me, mainly because there is nothing you can do to prevent it. I have 3 users on my laptop, all with passwords and a scanned fingerprint, but what is the point in that security when anyone can just delete that information?

All the more reason to install some sort of secondary security software, like Prey Project. If you can't stop someone from getting access to your PC, then your best line of defense is to be able to track them. No computer of mine will ever be without a secondary security system, and highly recommend Prey (being free helps too). I am truly not trying to make you paranoid about your computer, but if you think you're data is secure, you are sorely mistaken.

You may have noticed that I neglected to mention the names of the programs. I will not mention them because I will not help you break into a system. Besides, all it really takes is a search on the internet.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go lock up my computer in a safe. And wrap it in chains. And then bury it.