How To Crack Wd Smartware Password Hack

How To Crack Wd Smartware Password Hack I used an external WD hard drive for my backups, but it decided to not speak to the computer anymore last week. Forgot my password ^^This. The password is there for a reason - it's so that if someone steals the device they cannot get access to the content. There is no backdoor, quick fix or workaround. When you've set the device up again, you might want to use something like KeePass v2 to store the password for future use.

Sport training program. The encryption systems used in Western Digital's portable hard drives are pretty pointless, according to new research. It appears anyone getting hold of the vulnerable devices can easily decrypt them.

WD's My Passport boxes automatically encrypt data as it is written to disk and decrypt the data as it is read back to the computer. The devices use 256-bit AES encryption, and can be password-protected: giving the correct password enables the data to be successfully accessed.

Now, a trio of infosec folks – Gunnar Alendal, Christian Kison and 'modg' – have tried out six models in the WD My Passport family, and found blunders in the software designs.

For example, on some models, the drive's encryption key can be trivially brute-forced, which is bad news if someone steals the drive: decrypting it is child's play. And the firmware on some devices can be easily altered, allowing an attacker to silently compromise the drive and its file systems.

'We developed several different attacks to recover user data from these password-protected and fully encrypted external hard disks,' the trio's paper [PDF] [slides PDF] states.

'In addition to this, other security threats are discovered, such as easy modification of firmware and on-board software that is executed on the user's PC, facilitating evil maid and badUSB attack scenarios, logging user credentials, and spreading of malicious code.'

My Passport models using a JMicron JMS538S micro-controller have a pseudorandom number generator that is not cryptographically secure, and merely cycles through a sequence of 255 32-bit values. This generator is used to create the data encryption key, and the drive firmware leaks enough information about the state of the random number generator for this key to be recreated, we're told. Alien 3 assembly cut online.

'An attacker can regenerate any DEK [data encryption key] generated from this vulnerable setup with a worst-case complexity of close to 2⁴⁰,' the paper states.

'Once the DEK [data encryption key] is recovered, an attacker can read and decrypt any raw disk sector, revealing decrypted user data. Note that this attack does not need, nor reveals, the user password.'

Drive models using a JMicron JMS569 controller – which is present in newer My Passport products – can be forcibly unlocked using commercial forensic tools that access the unencrypted system area of the drive, we're told.

Drives using a Symwave 6316 controller store their encryption keys on the disk, encrypted with a known hardcoded AES-256 key stored in the firmware, so recovery of the data is trivial.

It must be stressed that the flaws are in WD's software running on these microcontrollers, rather than the chips themselves.

This paper on WD self-encrypting drives has to be read to be believed. https://t.co/Pjx0bJqtQR ht @jedisct1pic.twitter.com/uX8IR6Jpqz

How To Crack Wd Smartware Password Hack Download

Meanwhile, Western Digital says it is on the case.

'WD has been in a dialogue with independent security researchers relating to their security observations in certain models of our My Passport hard drives,' spokeswoman Heather Skinner told The Register in a statement.

'We continue to evaluate the observations. We highly value and encourage this kind of responsible community engagement because it ultimately benefits our customers by making our products better. We encourage all security researchers to responsibly report potential security vulnerabilities or concerns to WD Customer Service and Support at http://support.wdc.com.' ®

Wd Smartware Pro

What is Password Cracking?

Incredimail app. Password cracking is the process of attempting to gain Unauthorized access to restricted systems using common passwords or algorithms that guess passwords. In other words, it's an art of obtaining the correct password that gives access to a system protected by an authentication method.

Password cracking employs a number of techniques to achieve its goals. The cracking process can involve either comparing stored passwords against word list or use algorithms to generate passwords that match

In this Tutorial, we will introduce you to the common password cracking techniques and the countermeasures you can implement to protect systems against such attacks.

Topics covered in this tutorial

What is password strength?

Password strength is the measure of a password's efficiency to resist password cracking attacks. The strength of a password is determined by;

For example, on some models, the drive's encryption key can be trivially brute-forced, which is bad news if someone steals the drive: decrypting it is child's play. And the firmware on some devices can be easily altered, allowing an attacker to silently compromise the drive and its file systems.

'We developed several different attacks to recover user data from these password-protected and fully encrypted external hard disks,' the trio's paper [PDF] [slides PDF] states.

'In addition to this, other security threats are discovered, such as easy modification of firmware and on-board software that is executed on the user's PC, facilitating evil maid and badUSB attack scenarios, logging user credentials, and spreading of malicious code.'

My Passport models using a JMicron JMS538S micro-controller have a pseudorandom number generator that is not cryptographically secure, and merely cycles through a sequence of 255 32-bit values. This generator is used to create the data encryption key, and the drive firmware leaks enough information about the state of the random number generator for this key to be recreated, we're told. Alien 3 assembly cut online.

'An attacker can regenerate any DEK [data encryption key] generated from this vulnerable setup with a worst-case complexity of close to 2⁴⁰,' the paper states.

'Once the DEK [data encryption key] is recovered, an attacker can read and decrypt any raw disk sector, revealing decrypted user data. Note that this attack does not need, nor reveals, the user password.'

Drive models using a JMicron JMS569 controller – which is present in newer My Passport products – can be forcibly unlocked using commercial forensic tools that access the unencrypted system area of the drive, we're told.

Drives using a Symwave 6316 controller store their encryption keys on the disk, encrypted with a known hardcoded AES-256 key stored in the firmware, so recovery of the data is trivial.

It must be stressed that the flaws are in WD's software running on these microcontrollers, rather than the chips themselves.

This paper on WD self-encrypting drives has to be read to be believed. https://t.co/Pjx0bJqtQR ht @jedisct1pic.twitter.com/uX8IR6Jpqz

How To Crack Wd Smartware Password Hack Download

Meanwhile, Western Digital says it is on the case.

'WD has been in a dialogue with independent security researchers relating to their security observations in certain models of our My Passport hard drives,' spokeswoman Heather Skinner told The Register in a statement.

'We continue to evaluate the observations. We highly value and encourage this kind of responsible community engagement because it ultimately benefits our customers by making our products better. We encourage all security researchers to responsibly report potential security vulnerabilities or concerns to WD Customer Service and Support at http://support.wdc.com.' ®

Wd Smartware Pro

What is Password Cracking?

Incredimail app. Password cracking is the process of attempting to gain Unauthorized access to restricted systems using common passwords or algorithms that guess passwords. In other words, it's an art of obtaining the correct password that gives access to a system protected by an authentication method.

Password cracking employs a number of techniques to achieve its goals. The cracking process can involve either comparing stored passwords against word list or use algorithms to generate passwords that match

In this Tutorial, we will introduce you to the common password cracking techniques and the countermeasures you can implement to protect systems against such attacks.

Topics covered in this tutorial

What is password strength?

Password strength is the measure of a password's efficiency to resist password cracking attacks. The strength of a password is determined by;

• Length: the number of characters the password contains.
• Complexity: does it use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbol?
• Unpredictability: is it something that can be guessed easily by an attacker?

Let's now look at a practical example. We will use three passwords namely

1. password

2. password1

3. #password1$

For this example, we will use the password strength indicator of Cpanel when creating passwords. The images below show the password strengths of each of the above-listed passwords.

Note: the password used is password the strength is 1, and it's very weak.

Note: the password used is password1 the strength is 28, and it's still weak.

Note: The password used is #password1$ the strength is 60 and it's strong.

The higher the strength number, better the password.

Let's suppose that we have to store our above passwords using md5 encryption. We will use an online md5 hash generator to convert our passwords into md5 hashes.

We will now use http://www.md5this.com/ to crack the above hashes. The images below show the password cracking results for the above passwords.

As you can see from the above results, we managed to crack the first and second passwords that had lower strength numbers. We didn't manage to crack the third password which was longer, complex and unpredictable. It had a higher strength number.

Password cracking techniques

There are a number of techniques that can be used to crack passwords. We will describe the most commonly used ones below;

• Dictionary attack– This method involves the use of a wordlist to compare against user passwords.
• Brute force attack– This method is similar to the dictionary attack. Brute force attacks use algorithms that combine alpha-numeric characters and symbols to come up with passwords for the attack. For example, a password of the value 'password' can also be tried as p@$$word using the brute force attack.
• Rainbow table attack– This method uses pre-computed hashes. Let's assume that we have a database which stores passwords as md5 hashes. We can create another database that has md5 hashes of commonly used passwords. We can then compare the password hash we have against the stored hashes in the database. If a match is found, then we have the password.
• Guess– As the name suggests, this method involves guessing. Passwords such as qwerty, password, admin, etc. are commonly used or set as default passwords. If they have not been changed or if the user is careless when selecting passwords, then they can be easily compromised.
• Spidering– Most organizations use passwords that contain company information. This information can be found on company websites, social media such as facebook, twitter, etc. Spidering gathers information from these sources to come up with word lists. The word list is then used to perform dictionary and brute force attacks.

Spidering sample dictionary attack wordlist

Password cracking tool

These are software programs that are used to crack user passwords. We already looked at a similar tool in the above example on password strengths. The website www.md5this.com uses a rainbow table to crack passwords. We will now look at some of the commonly used tools

John the Ripper

John the Ripper uses the command prompt to crack passwords. This makes it suitable for advanced users who are comfortable working with commands. It uses to wordlist to crack passwords. The program is free, but the word list has to be bought. It has free alternative word lists that you can use. Visit the product website https://www.openwall.com/john/ for more information and how to use it.

Wd Smartware Website

Cain & Abel

Cain & Abel runs on windows. It is used to recover passwords for user accounts, recovery of Microsoft Access passwords; networking sniffing, etc. Unlike John the Ripper, Cain & Abel uses a graphic user interface. It is very common among newbies and script kiddies because of its simplicity of use. Visit the product website http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Decrypting-Decoding/Cain-and-Abel.shtml for more information and how to use it.

Ophcrack

Ophcrack is a cross-platform Windows password cracker that uses rainbow tables to crack passwords. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It also has a module for brute force attacks among other features. Visit the product website http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/ for more information and how to use it.

Password Cracking Counter Measures

• An organization can use the following methods to reduce the chances of the passwords been cracked
• Avoid short and easily predicable passwords
• Avoid using passwords with predictable patterns such as 11552266.
• Passwords stored in the database must always be encrypted. For md5 encryptions, its better to salt the password hashes before storing them. Salting involves adding some word to the provided password before creating the hash.
• Most registration systems have password strength indicators, organizations must adopt policies that favor high password strength numbers.

Hacking Activity: Hack Now!

In this practical scenario, we are going to crack Windows account with a simple password. Windows uses NTLM hashes to encrypt passwords. We will use the NTLM cracker tool in Cain and Abel to do that.

Cain and Abel cracker can be used to crack passwords using;

• Dictionary attack
• Brute force
• Cryptanalysis

We will use the dictionary attack in this example. You will need to download the dictionary attack wordlist here 10k-Most-Common.zip

For this demonstration, we have created an account called Accounts with the password qwerty on Windows 7.

Password cracking steps

• Open Cain and Abel, you will get the following main screen

• Make sure the cracker tab is selected as shown above
• Click on the Add button on the toolbar.

• The following dialog window will appear

• The local user accounts will be displayed as follows. Note the results shown will be of the user accounts on your local machine.

• Right click on the account you want to crack. For this tutorial, we will use Accounts as the user account.

• The following screen will appear

• Right click on the dictionary section and select Add to list menu as shown above
• Browse to the 10k most common.txt file that you just downloaded

• Click on start button
• If the user used a simple password like qwerty, then you should be able to get the following results.

• Note: the time taken to crack the password depends on the password strength, complexity and processing power of your machine.
• If the password is not cracked using a dictionary attack, you can try brute force or cryptanalysis attacks.

Summary

• Password cracking is the art of recovering stored or transmitted passwords.
• Password strength is determined by the length, complexity, and unpredictability of a password value.
• Common password techniques include dictionary attacks, brute force, rainbow tables, spidering and cracking.
• Password cracking tools simplify the process of cracking passwords.