Guessing a Password

If you were to try a brute force attack on cracking an e-mail password, you might spend an eternity going through all possible values. However that might not be a smart way to go about the task of guessing a user's password. A little knowledge about password characteristics can increase your chances and speed up your results considerably.

Let's start with password length. Here are the most common lengths of password, with the most common lengths presented first:

• 8 characters
• 7 characters
• 9 characters
• 6 characters
• 10 characters

If you choose only passwords that are between 6 and 10 characters, you will have tried the lengths of 93% of all passwords out there. Nine out of ten sounds like good odds to me. For a super fast shortcut to guessing passwords manually, I would try out the most common passwords that are out there. Here are some really common ones:

• password1
• abc123
• password
• blink182
• qwerty1
• 123abc
• 123456
• soccer
• princess1
• monkey

Finally I leave you with some advice. Don't choose any of these common passwords as your own. Try not to choose a password length that is common. And above all, do not choose a password that can be found in a dictionary.

Password Recovery

If you wanted to get into somebody else's e-mail, you would think there would be some software that could do it for you. Right? I did a little searching and found a program called the "Password Recovery Toolkit". That sounded real promising. It is distributed by AccessData. The marketing hype on their web site did not help me understand what exactly this software did.

I dug a little deeper into this program offering. In fact, I read a lot of the user manual which is available online. The installation requires a runtime called CodeMeter to be installed on your computer. However the AccessData site gives you instructions on how to bypass this restriction. They get you to hack your Windows registry. Sounds like my kind of company.

The buzzwords for this program sound right. Its job is to "recover passwords quickly and easily". Sign me up. However reading further I found that this product is targeted for law enforcement professionals, or maybe security professionals. That doesn't sound like me. I am just looking for how I can crack some arbitrary email account password. The more I read, the more I got the feeling that this product is for somebody who used a password when encrypting a file on their machine, and then forgot that password.

I am trying to download an evaluation copy of the Password Recovery Toolkit. However it is taking forever. It is still only 55% complete. And I fear that the software might require the use of a dongle. You know. That is some hardware key you have to plug into your computer so that you do not illegally copy and use the software. Bummer. I wanted to try an evaluation copy. I will give you an update if I ever get this software to download and run.

Hacking Gmail

It was getting late. I was supposed to be studying for a college test we are taking tomorrow. But I just could not get in the mood. So I decided to waste my time reading Reddit. I like checking the links in the programming section. That is where I came across an interesting link to a post about scripting Gmail.

The author of an article showed some tricks on how to script Gmail. For example, he wrote a small script to create a page with links to all your unread Gmail mail. This guy seems to have some handy skills with Gmail. But here is the kicker. Almost all the comments on his page were requests for help on hacking e-mail accounts.

This poor guy just has some scripting skills in the Gmail environment. He can't hack anybody's account to get their password. But the response to his article has been a multitude of requests for assistance hacking some accounts. I am going to invite each of these posters to come read my blog. If you are one of the people I have personally invited, then welcome.

Crackulous for Sale

Different mass media sources alerted me to the fact that a program named Crackulous for ten bucks. This application cracks iPhone applications and lets you download and run them for free. The media was surprised that a guy who developed cracking software would be concerned about people cracking his own software and not paying for it. I agreed that it seemed a bit hypocritical.

I decided to try to Google the product to find more information about it. This is where I was surprised upon learning that this software was actually developed by another team of developers at Hackulous. Apparently the guy selling the software had stolen the application himself, and was turning around and trying to sell software that he himself had not developed.

Now I find all of this amusing. Yes it is a shame that somebody took someone else’s software and started selling it as his own. But come on. We are talking about software to crack iPhone applications. No there does not seem to be any honor among thieves.

It is hilarious to see the outrage by readers of the Hackulous site. What do you expect? You are on a site that has posted a free application to steal iPhone software. Don’t be surprised if somebody robs you too. Of course I am making a judgment call here. I am saying that you lose some respect and/or rights when you write software that is itself performing illegal activities.

I guess everybody needs to be worried about piracy. That includes developers who write software to pirate other software. Does anybody else see the humor in this? At least the mainstream media guys found it odd that the guy who stole the software was complaining about people stealing his stolen software. LOL.

Corporate Coders

I can’t remember the last time I went to a software development conference. It must have been well over 10 years ago. Maybe that shows my age. However I plan to change that this year. My company let’s you attend a training class once a year. This year I am going to propose that I go to a software development conference instead. The only good thing so far this year is that I watched an online video from a presentation at a development conference. The video bombed about half way through it. But I picked up some interesting thoughts from the part I did see.

A theme of the talk was that corporate goals are evil. You will most likely need to achieve some of these goals in your day job if you need to pay bills. But that does not make them any less evil. Some of these corporate motives include ignoring whether users like your software. Other motives are plain greed of corporations. The development work itself in the corporate world is usually boring.

For interesting problems at work, companies will most likely want to purchase solutions. It is difficult to get approval to roll your own solutions even if yours are superior. The decisions are usually made by clueless individuals at the top of the food chain. One way to prevent this is to become a top dog at your company. However you can also try to make the best darn presentation to convince the management that it would benefit the company to let you solve problems yourself.

Part of the problem to gain credibility is that management thinks that you are lazy. They liken you to a factory worker. You are supposed to do what you are told. They essentially want you to be a corporate coder. Such individuals are distinguished by working with only one programming language, not writing code outside of work, and only working on things you are supposed to do. One way to combat this trap is to write software outside you daily job.

Some of the work I do for a living is fun. Most of it consists of normal corporate boring tasks. I have been trying to branch out and roll some projects of my own. However it gets harder and harder to find the time. It is hard when the evil corporate machine wants you to work lots of hours to achieve their goals. I have not given up the fight yet though.

TV Converter Box Coupon Program

I hope you have heard. In about a month, the broadcast of analog TV signals is going to end. Instead only digital signals shall be broadcast. Therefore old TVs which only process analog signals will no longer work.

The government has come out with a TV Converter Box Coupon Program. This allows you to buy a device that can convert the new digital signals to the analog signals required by old TVs. The coupon is a discount on the price of these devices.

As soon as I heard about this, I signed up to get my coupons. It was a good thing that I did. They have run out of coupons for now. I did delay in actually going out to buy my converter boxes. However the coupons expire 3 months after they are issued. so today I bought two devices. The coupons take $40 off the price of the converters. Unfortunately they cost $60 each at my local Radio Shack. But hey, I saved some money.

I have no immediate need for these boxes. My cable company transmits the TV signals I need to work with all my TVs. However you never know when you might need to view TV over the air. So I bought a couple converter boxes. I might have been able to save some money by shopping at Walmart instead of Radio Shack.

The real question in my mind is why are they discontinuing the transmission of analog TV signals. On the surface it seems like a scam to force me to buy a new TV, pay for cable TV service, or purchase a converter. I would be more up in arms if they did not provide the coupon program. Time to investigate this whole move to digital signals a bit further.

Dictionary List

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I am planning on writing a program that cracks some encrypted code. This is a challenge posed by the FBI. To do this, I need to compare possible decrypted data with English words to see if the result is jibberish or not. My problem was that I could not find a simple file full of dicionary words.

Many free words lists come in some strange format that gives you a whole lot more information than just the words. Other words lists are divided up into many files. I just wanted a simple word list. So I wrote a program which processes a complex dictionary down to a single work list.

Now that I have done the work for this preprocessing program, I am ready to share the results with you. I am sure people can make good use of a English word list file. Here is my Dictionary for your use. It has been zipped up with WinZip. This file has over 53,000 words in it. Enjoy.