{"id":3555,"date":"2007-11-22T12:40:39","date_gmt":"2007-11-22T11:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/protect-your-pc-from-a-password-crack\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:39:53","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:39:53","slug":"protect-your-pc-from-a-password-crack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/protect-your-pc-from-a-password-crack\/","title":{"rendered":"Protect your PC from a password crack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image3557\" title=\"Find the key to protect your password\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2007\/11\/key.png\" alt=\"Find the key to protect your password\" align=\"right\" \/>A Cambridge University researcher whose blog was being hacked apparently managed to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2007\/11\/21\/google_md5_crack\/\">find his attacker&#8217;s password<\/a> just by searching in Google. Using a dictionary attack in English and Russian, the researcher simply entered his attacker&#8217;s MD5 hash (used by WordPress to store passwords) into Google, which revealed the word &#8220;Anthony&#8221;, the attacker&#8217;s password. This is just another example of how important it is for you to have strong passwords and to make sure you protect them at all times. Check out Elena&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-create-and-remember-strong-passwords\/\">good tip<\/a> on how to create and remember strong passwords. She also wrote up on how to <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/unveil-hidden-passwords-in-web-pages\/\">unveil hidden passwords in web pages,<\/a> a trick similar to that which the Cambridge University researcher pulled.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve also found a few other applications that allow you to reveal or crack passwords. <a href=\"http:\/\/ophcrack.en.softonic.com\/\">Ophcrack<\/a> uses rainbow tables to crack passwords, <a href=\"http:\/\/password-revealer.en.softonic.com\/\">Password Revealer<\/a> can show passwords typed in edit boxes, and both <a href=\"http:\/\/asterisk-key.en.softonic.com\/\">Asterisk Key<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/asterik-logger.en.softonic.com\/\">Asterisk Logger<\/a> can unmask the password that hides under asterisks. Remember though, try to keep your use of these programs &#8220;legal&#8221;, ie don&#8217;t start trying to break into banking sites or people&#8217;s emails. If what your looking for is to  recover a lost password, check out our list of <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/top-password-recovery-tools-for-microsoft-products\/\">top password recovery tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Cambridge University researcher whose blog was being hacked apparently managed to find his attacker&#8217;s password just by searching in Google. Using a dictionary attack in English and Russian, the researcher simply entered his attacker&#8217;s MD5 hash (used by WordPress to store passwords) into Google, which revealed the word &#8220;Anthony&#8221;, the attacker&#8217;s password. This is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/protect-your-pc-from-a-password-crack\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Protect your PC from a password crack&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-3555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336705,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions\/336705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=3555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}