What Is Ophcrack
Ophcrack is a freeware open-source app capable of finding Windows passwords. It is using LM hashes through the rainbow table, and it is a great implementation of these tables done by the inventors. It is designed specifically for Windows password recovery. Other software available online but this tool can proceed through different approaches. One of its methodologies is to install the software on the same computer. If the machine is completely locked, the Ophcrack Windows 10/8/7 lets the user create a “Live CD” from a different computer.
This tool can bring in the hashes from multiple formats like downloading them from Windows’s SAM files. It is based on a Graphical user interface and can be used on various OS. Ophcrack has the power to discover the passwords in just a few minutes for most PC. Developers provide for free the rainbow tables for LM hashes of alphanumeric passwords.
Popular In Which OS
Ophcrack supports Linux/ Unix, Mac, and Windows Operating Systems to recover the password. It is much more popular in Windows 7 password recovery software. The users trying to opt it out as Ophcrack Windows 8 or Ophcrack Windows 10 may get disappointed to some extent as the success rate starts decreasing on higher versions.
Features
- Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, …
- Cracks LM and NTLM hashes.
- Free tables available for Windows XP and Vista/7.
- Brute-force module for simple passwords.
- Audit mode and CSV export.
- Real-time graphs to analyze the passwords.
- LiveCD is available to simplify the cracking.
- Dumps and loads hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition.
- Free and open-source software (GPL).
Advantages Of Ophcrack
- It is free software, so you can download it online.
- Ophcrack does not need installation, which helps in saving space in our computer.
- Ophcrack gives the users a choice to make a recovery CD known as Live CD, which works automatically to crack the forgotten password.
- It is useful to recover passwords on Windows, Mac, and Linux Operating Systems.
- This tool is based on “Rainbow tables” technology.
- Ophcrack is capable of recovering the password from zero knowledge provided to it.
Disadvantages Of Ophcrack
- The user interface is quite complicated from a non-technical person’s point of view.
- Anti-virus software pre-loaded on a system may reject its working capacity, as it mostly gets detected out as a virus attack on the network.
- To recover the password, you need to download a large ISO image file of Ophcrack Windows 7, which hampers many internet data.
- The ISO image file burning over a USB or CD drive takes a lot of time.
- Simple passwords are recovered soon, but alphanumeric password recovery is a very long process.
- It is mostly observed that the tool fails to recover passwords longer than five characters.
- Ophcrack works comparatively better on lower versions up to Windows 7 but lacks its performance capacity to recover passwords in Windows 8/8.1/10.
- Ophcrack is open-source software, making it vulnerable to bad actors that can disturb the source code and turn it into a malware carrier if downloaded from an unknown source.
- There is no customer support provided over the website.