sesame

sesame is a useful and reliable windows based application which allows the user to change, reset or discover windows passwords.

this completely unique product has an easy to use interface that allows you to select a user account and modify their password. the user account manager in windows requires that you specify the current password before you can set a new one - our application does not require this!

windows stores user names and passwords in the windows registry. the registry is basically a few files on your hard disk, these are stored in your windows/system32/config folder; the ones we are interested in are called SAM and SYSTEM.

the SAM file stores the user names, password hashes (irreversibly encrypted) and lots of other information about the users account. sesame allows you to modify this information directly.

SYSKEY was designed by Microsoft to try and prevent applications like ours from working. it adds a further layer of very strong encryption onto the SAM file to make it harder to extract the hashes. We were one of the first companies to release a commercial, easy to use way of cracking SYSKEY. the SYSTEM file contains information that sesame uses to remove the SYSKEY protection.

unfortunately while Windows is running, these files are not accessible. you will be able to see them but windows will not allow you to open or modify them. there are several ways of overcoming this:

* physically remove the hard disk in question and mount it in a different PC running sesame. you will be able to access the file normally. * use a USB to IDE adaptor, there are many available for less than $40 - try usb-ware's or the one's at direct usb store. this is extremely conveniant and gives you complete, unrestricted access to the disk. please note we take no responsiblity for the quality or content of sites out of our control. * wait until we've finished sesame_seed!

Limitations:

￭ Password discovery limited to NT not LAN manager, and up to 7 characters in length. ￭ Cannot save modified SAM file.