August 1, 2005

Recovering Passwords Stored in Browser

Recently my sister's (old old old) computer has signaled to her in oh so many ways that it is ready to turn belly up, kick its poor little peripherals weakly, and pass into another realm, along with all her data and personal settings.

Because she's MY sister, we are giving the poor thing careful hospice care, so that when it finally does go 'bye-bye', she isn't devastated.

She purchased a large hard drive, and has been spending time the past few weeks to copy over scads of pictures, videos, documents, music files and e-mail messages.

However, like most people, she hasn't done a particularly careful job of keeping track of all the passwords to her favorites sites. This could be a real problem, because she has been a certified NetGoddess since 1994, and people depend on her writings.

She asked me how to capture the passwords she has stored now. Since Google is our friend, I was able to find out some interesting information on how Internet Explorer stores passwords, and how you can recover them.

Interestingly enough, Internet Explorer stores the passwords in something called Microsoft Protected Storage, which ultimately means that they are stored in the registry.

This gives us a couple of different ways to recover them.

We could find out where in the registry the passwords are stored, and try to export the registry key(s), and then import them to another computer, but its a pretty bad idea for most people to play in the registry.

We could use a program that can read this information and that allows us to export the data.

I tried 2 programs, one free and one commercial. I decided to buy the commercial application (of course-I hadn't pulled out my credit card for at least 30 minutes) because the interface was slicker and easier to work with.

The freeware app Protected Storage Explorer is downloadable at http://www.codeproject.com/tools/PSExplorer.asp, but you do have to register to download. Make sure you select not to recieve newsletters and other e-mail unless you really are interested in programming topics.

The commercial application I chose, Internet Explorer Password Recovery, is available from Rixler Inc. They have a number of other password recovery utilities that might be useful, depending on what you need to recover.

Another free utility I use to recover passwords stored in software applications (not for websites, however) is PassReveal. You can usually Google for this utility, it's been uploaded to many servers. If you do, you will also find out that it is considered a hacking tool (which it is). If you install it, all good spyware and trojan detecting programs will complain.

Of course, if you use a password manager, you might not have to worry about recovering passwords. I had to start using one a few years ago, if only because I use multiple computers. You can use a program to manage your passwords. I bought into SplashID a few years ago, our Publisher swears by Keepass (free!)

Tip: If you are using Firefox or Mozilla, your passwords are stored in your profile folder.

Posted by Trigger Tech at August 1, 2005 12:02 PM Permalink

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Posted by: AmericanLife at August 1, 2005 1:08 PM

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