NirBlog

Many people ask me about the location in the Registry or file system that applications store the passwords. So I prepared a list of password storage locations for popular applications.
Be aware that even if you know the location of the saved password, it doesn’t mean that you can move it from one computer to another. many applications store the passwords in a way that prevent you from moving them to another computer or user profile.

• Internet Explorer 4.00 – 6.00: The passwords are stored in a secret location in the Registry known as the “Protected Storage”.
  The base key of the Protected Storage is located under the following key:
  “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Protected Storage System Provider”.
  You can browse the above key in the Registry Editor (RegEdit), but you won’t be able to watch the passwords, because they are encrypted.
  Also, this key cannot easily moved from one computer to another, like you do with regular Registry keys.

  IE PassView and Protected Storage PassView utilities allow you to recover these passwords.

• Internet Explorer 7.00 – 8.00: The new versions of Internet Explorer stores the passwords in 2 different locations.
  AutoComplete passwords are stored in the Registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\IntelliForms\Storage2.
  HTTP Authentication passwords are stored in the Credentials file under Documents and Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Credentials , together with login passwords of LAN computers and other passwords.

  IE PassView can be used to recover these passwords.

• Firefox: The passwords are stored in one of the following filenames: signons.txt, signons2.txt, and signons3.txt (depends on Firefox version)
  These password files are located inside the profile folder of Firefox, in [Windows Profile]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[Profile Name]
  Also, key3.db, located in the same folder, is used for encryption/decription of the passwords.
• Google Chrome Web browser: The passwords are stored in [Windows Profile]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Data
  (This filename is SQLite database which contains encrypted passwords and other stuff)
• Opera: The passwords are stored in wand.dat filename, located under [Windows Profile]\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile
• Outlook Express (All Versions): The POP3/SMTP/IMAP passwords Outlook Express are also stored in the Protected Storage, like the passwords of old versions of Internet Explorer.

  Both Mail PassView and Protected Storage PassView utilities can recover these passwords.

• Outlook 98/2000: Old versions of Outlook stored the POP3/SMTP/IMAP passwords in the Protected Storage, like the passwords of old versions of Internet Explorer.

  Both Mail PassView and Protected Storage PassView utilities can recover these passwords.

• Outlook 2002-2008: All new versions of Outlook store the passwords in the same Registry key of the account settings.
  The accounts are stored in the Registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\[Profile Name]\9375CFF0413111d3B88A00104B2A6676\[Account Index]
  If you use Outlook to connect an account on Exchange server, the password is stored in the Credentials file, together with login passwords of LAN computers.

  Mail PassView can be used to recover lost passwords of Outlook 2002-2008.

• Windows Live Mail: All account settings, including the encrypted passwords, are stored in [Windows Profile]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\[Account Name]
  The account filename is an xml file with .oeaccount extension.

  Mail PassView can be used to recover lost passwords of Windows Live Mail.

• ThunderBird: The password file is located under [Windows Profile]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[Profile Name]
  You should search a filename with .s extension.
• Google Talk: All account settings, including the encrypted passwords, are stored in the Registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Talk\Accounts\[Account Name]
• Google Desktop: Email passwords are stored in the Registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\Mailboxes\[Account Name]
• MSN/Windows Messenger version 6.x and below: The passwords are stored in one of the following locations:
  1. Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger
  2. Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MessengerService
  3. In the Credentials file, with entry named as “Passport.Net\\*”. (Only when the OS is XP or more)
• MSN Messenger version 7.x: The passwords are stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\IdentityCRL\Creds\[Account Name]
• Windows Live Messenger version 8.x/9.x: The passwords are stored in the Credentials file, with entry name begins with “WindowsLive:name=”.

  These passwords can be recovered by both Network Password Recovery and MessenPass utilities.

• Yahoo Messenger 6.x: The password is stored in the Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager
  (“EOptions string” value)
• Yahoo Messenger 7.5 or later: The password is stored in the Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager – “ETS” value.
  The value stored in “ETS” value cannot be recovered back to the original password.
• AIM Pro: The passwords are stored in the Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AIM\AIMPRO\[Account Name]
• AIM 6.x: The passwords are stored in the Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\America Online\AIM6\Passwords
• ICQ Lite 4.x/5.x/2003: The passwords are stored in the Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mirabilis\ICQ\NewOwners\[ICQ Number]
  (MainLocation value)
• ICQ 6.x: The password hash is stored in [Windows Profile]\Application Data\ICQ\[User Name]\Owner.mdb (Access Database)
  (The password hash cannot be recovered back to the original password)
• Digsby: The main password of Digsby is stored in [Windows Profile]\Application Data\Digsby\digsby.dat
  All other passwords are stored in Digsby servers.
• PaltalkScene: The passwords are stored in the Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Paltalk\[Account Name].

The new version of IE PassView (v1.15) allows you to extract lost passwords stored by Internet Explorer 7.0 from an external drive. This feature can be useful if you have a dead system that cannot boot anymore, and you want to recover your passwords from there.
In order to use this feature, you must know the last log-on password that you used for the user profile that store the passwords.

The new version of Volumouse now allows you to choose any color for the the On-Screen Indicator, as well as you can choose to display a percent label.

Here’s a sample screenshot:

As promised a week ago, here’s the 5 new utilities added to NirSoft Web site:

IPInfoOffline, DNSDataView, SkypeLogView, WirelessNetConsole, and UserProfilesView.
These utilities will also be added very soon to the utilities section and to the ‘NirSoft Panel’ page.

Here’s a small summary of latest changes in NirSoft utilities:

• MozillaCacheView and OperaCacheView: New option in ‘Copy Selected Files To…’: Save the files in the directory structure of the Web site.
• USBDeview: Added new option – Open In RegEdit.
• ShellExView: New restriction – ShellExView won’t allow you to disable at once more than 15 shell extensions created by Microsoft.
• PasswordFox: Added support for specifying the master password (in the ‘Select Folders’ dialog-box or from command-line).
• SiteShoter: Added new option: ‘Take a screenshot of this Web page every…’

There are 5 new utilities that are currently cooked in the kitchen of Nirsoft, and are going to get out of the oven very soon.

So here they are, with a small description for each of them:

• IPInfoOffline: Allows you to view information about IP addresses, without connecting any external server. It uses a compressed IP addresses database that is stored inside the exe file. For each IP address, the following information is displayed: IP block range, Organization (RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC or AFRINIC), Assigned Date, Country Name, and Country Code.
• DNSDataView: This utility is a GUI alternative to the NSLookup tool that comes with Windows operating system. It allows you to easily retrieve the DNS records (MX, NS, A, SOA) of the specified domains. You can use the default DNS server of your Internet connection, or use any other DNS server that you specify.
• SkypeLogView: This utility reads the log files created by Skype application, and displays the details of incoming/outgoing calls, chat messages, and file transfers made by the specified Skype account.
• WirelessNetConsole: Console version of WirelessNetView. It dumps all current detected wireless networks information into the standard output. For each wireless network, the following information is displayed: SSID, Signal Quality in %, PHY types, RSSI, MAC Address, Channel Frequency, and more.
• UserProfilesView: This utility displays the list of all user profiles that you currently have in your system. For each user profile, the following information is displayed: Domain\User Name, Profile Path, Last Load Time, Registry File Size, User SID, and more.

These utilities will probably be ready for the first tasting in the next Saturday (November 1, 2008), and will be served first in this blog, and then later in the entire site, including the utilities and packages sections.

nirsoft.net is now hosted in a new server. The site will work much faster than before in the peak usage hours, as well as downtimes will be minimal.

The amount traffic received by nirsoft.net was gradually increased, and that caused the http server to crash due to large amount of requests.
The hosting company removed my site for several hours because the server also hosts a few other sites. I’m now in a process of moving nirsoft.net site to a new server, and that will minimize the site downtime to almost 0%.

If you already worked with my password recovery tools, you probably know that most of them can only recover the passwords of the current logged-on user, but they cannot recover the passwords from another user profile or from an external drive.
The reason for this limitation is that most of these tools use some Windows API calls to decrypt the passwords, and these API calls only works for the current logged-on user.

In order to allow my tools to recover the passwords from an external drive,
I used my reverse engineering skills to find out exactly how Windows password decryption works, and wrote the code that do the same thing, but without the restriction of the current logged-on user.

So here’s the first tool that uses my new decryption code: Network Password Recovery.
This means that you can now recover the passwords stored inside the Credentials file of Windows XP/Vista/2003/2008 even if you have a dead system that cannot boot anymore.

There is only one restriction: you must know the last log-on password of the user that owned the Credentials file you wish to recover. The SHA hash of the log-on password is used in the process of Credentials file encryption, and without knowing that log-on password, the content of the Credentials file cannot be recovered instantly.

Sometimes people ask me “How do I print the data appeared in your tool ?”.
Although there is no printing support in my tools, you can easily send the data to a printer by using one of the following options:

1. Copy & Paste – You can select the data that you wish to print and copy it to the clipboard with Ctrl+C. After that, you can paste it to another application that support printing, like Excel, OpenOffice Spreadsheet, Notepad, and so on.
2. Print in your Web browser – You can select the data that you wish to print and then save it to html file. After that, you can open the saved html in your Web browser, and then print it.
3. Save to tab-delimited/comma-delimited file – You can select the data that you wish to print and then save it into a tab-delimited file or comma-delimited file.
   After that, you can open the saved file with any software that can import from tab-delimited/comma-delimited files, and then use that software to print the data.