Conclusion

 

This would be a totally perfect solution; however, if your Windows operating system crashed or reinstalled not the way it's supposed to be reinstalled, you can easily lose the entire list of your precious passwords. That's the toll for the comfort and convenience. It's good just about every website has a saving 'I forgot password' button. However, this button will not always take your headache from you.

Each software developer solves the forgotten password recovery problem their own way. Some of them officially recommend copying a couple of important files to another folder, while other send all registered users a special utility that allows managing the migration of private data, and the third ones pretend they are not seeing the problem. Nevertheless, the demand creates the offer, and password recovery programs are currently on a great demand.

In this article, let's try to classify types of private data stored in Internet Explorer, look at programs for the recovery of the data, and study real-life examples of recovering lost Internet passwords.

 

 

 

Synchronization passwords free user from having to enter passwords for cached websites (sites set to be available offline.) Passwords of this type are also stored in IE's Protected Storage.  

So are identities passwords. The identity-based access management mechanism is not widespread in Microsoft's products, except, perhaps, Outlook Express.

 

A special paragraph must cover the form auto-fill method, which constitutes a hybrid way of storing data. This method stores the actual data in the Protected Storage, and the URL, which the data belong to, is stored in user's registry. The URL written in the registry is stored not as plaintext - it is stored as hash. Here is the algorithm for reading form auto-fill data in IE 4 - 6:

BOOL CAutoformDecrypter::LoadPasswords(LPCTSTR cszUrl, CStringArray *saPasswords)

{

    assert(cszUrl && saPasswords);

    saPasswords->RemoveAll();

    //Check if autoform passwords are present in registry

    if ( EntryPresent(cszUrl) )

    {

        //Read PStore autoform passwords

        return PStoreReadAutoformPasswords cszUrl,saPasswords);

    }

    return FALSE;

}

BOOL CAutoformDecrypter::EntryPresent(LPCTSTR cszUrl)

{

    assert(cszUrl);

    DWORD dwRet, dwValue, dwSize=sizeof(dwValue);

    LPCTSTR cszHash=GetHash(cszUrl);

    //problems computing the hash

    if ( !cszHash )

        return FALSE;

    //Check the registry

    dwRet=SHGetValue(HKCU,_T("Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\IntelliForms\SPW"),cszHash,NULL,&dwValue,&dwSize);

    delete((LPTSTR)cszHash);

    if ( dwRet==ERROR_SUCCESS )

        return TRUE;

    m_dwLastError=E_NOTFOUND;

    return FALSE;

}

LPCTSTR CAutoformDecrypter::GetHash(LPCTSTR cszUrl)

{

    assert(cszUrl);

    BYTE buf[0x10];

    LPTSTR pRet=NULL;

    int i;

    if (HashData(cszUrl,buf,sizeof(buf)))

    {

        //Allocate some space

        pRet=new TCHAR [sizeof(buf) * sizeof(TCHAR) + sizeof(TCHAR)];

        if (pRet)

        {

            for ( i=0; i<sizeof(buf); i++ )

            {

                // Translate it into human readable format

                pRet[i]=(TCHAR) ((buf[i] & 0x3F) + 0x20);

            }

        pRet[i]=_T('