How to Find Stored Passwords on a Computer

There are a large number of websites and programs that prompt end users to save passwords on their personal computer(s). Popular web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and instant messaging software like Windows Live Messenger are capable of saving user logins and passwords on the local computer. A common task that arises for the end-user is to find stored passwords on a computer in order to recover lost or forgotten access information. Depending on the application being used, operating system, and specific user permissions, the task can be as easy as choosing some options in the OS or having to download specific tools to crack the password file hash.

How to Find Stored Passwords in Windows

Microsoft Windows has the capability to manage stored user names and passwords for individual computer users. Unique software is not required in most cases to find stored passwords on a computer running this OS.

Step 1 – Log in to the Windows

Step 2 – Select the “Start” menu button and launch the Windows “Control Panel.”

Step 3 – Locate the “Pick a category” menu label the select “User Accounts” menu option.

Step 4 – Open the “Stored User Names and Passwords” menu option by selecting “Manage my network passwords” beneath the “Related Tasks” menu label. If you are logged in as an administrator, select your user account. Then under related tasks choose the “Manage my network passwords.”

Step 5 – View the list of stored usernames and passwords will then be displayed.

Step 6 – Add an entry (or credential) to the stored passwords list by selecting “Add” under the “Stored User Names and Passwords” dialog box.

Step 7 – Input the name of the server or share in the “Server” box. The asterisk symbol can be used as a “wildcard” place holder if required. For example, “*.micsoft.com.”

Step 8 – Enter the name of the user account in the “User name” box. The format can be “server\yourUserName” or yourUserName@myAccountDomain.com format.

Step 9 – Input the password for the account and select the “Ok” menu button. Then, choose the “Close” button in the “Stored User Names and Password” dialog box.

Step 10 – Remove a stored password (or credential) by first selecting the credential to delete from the “Stored User Names and Passwords” dialog box. Then, select the “Remove” menu button. Windows will display a warning message that you must acknowledge before deleting the entry.
Step 11 – Edit a stored user name and password by first selecting the credential.

Step 12 – Then, select the “Properties” menu option to open the “Logon Information Properties” dialog box.

Step 13 – Change the login or password information for the account and click the “Ok” menu button. A change in password information will require you to type the new password twice before choosing the “Ok” menu button to ensure the correct entry has been used.

How to Find Stored Passwords in Firefox

The Mozilla FireFox Password Manager application stores user names and passwords on your computer’s hard drive and will automatically enter the data when visiting websites that require the information.

Steps to Use the Mozilla FireFox Password Manager

Step 1 – Launch Mozilla Firefox by double clicking the program icon on your computer’s desktop.

Step 2 – Select the “FireFox” menu button and then click the “Options” menu choice.

Step 3 – Select the “Security” menu tab that is located at the upper portion of the “Options” window.

Step 4 – Select the “Remember Passwords for Sites” check box if not already selected. Then, click the “Ok” menu button.

Step 5 – Log into a website that requires a username and password. Choose the “Remember” menu button on the subsequently displayed dialog box to save a new password in the FireFox Password Manager. Alternatively, you can choose the “Never for This Site” menu option to add an exception to the Password manger.

Step 6 – Choose the “Exceptions” menu button in FireFox to view the current exception list that the web browser is configured to never save a password. Sites can be removed from this list by clicking the “Remove All” menu button (removes all exceptions) or individually by selecting a site and choosing the “Remove” button.

Step 7 – View the saved passwords in the Password Manager by selecting the “Saved Passwords” menu button. You can also remove passwords from this window by clicking the “Remove All” or “Remove” menu buttons.

Steps to Change the FireFox Password Manager Master Password

The FireFox master password is used to protect the master key for the FireFox browser on your computer. The master key is used to encrypt email passwords, web site passwords, and other potentially sensitive information stored by the Form and Password Manager on your computer.

Step 1 – Launch Mozilla FireFox by double clicking the program icon.

Step 2 – Open the “Tasks” menu. Then select “Privacy & Security” followed by clicking the “Password Manager” and the “Change Master Password” menu options.

Step 3 – Use the “Set Master Password” dialog box to set a separate master password per security device used on your computer. For example, if you use one or more smart cards to store security certificates you should save a master password for each one. A pop-up menu located at the top of the “Set Master Password” dialog box will let you pick the device to save an individual password or change one.

Step 4 – For changing an old password, enter the old or existing password first. FireFox will display an “Incorrect password entered” message after clicking the “Ok” menu button if the old password is entered incorrectly. If this occurs, you will need to enter a new password into the field again along with the old one. A similar issue will occur if you do not enter the new password two times correctly. In this case; however, the “Ok” menu button will remain inactive and you will need to try these entries again.

How to Recover Passwords Hidden Behind Asterisks

A common problem that arises for end-users is determining what passwords are saved by their web browser if they do not have access to the Password Manager or equivalent application on their computer. The BulletsPassView utility is one of the most used freeware applications capable of performing this task. The program is a tool that is designed to reveal the passwords stored behind the asterisks in the standard password text box on the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer web browsers.

Improvements made to the BulletsPassView application from the legacy Asterisk Logger utility include support for Windows 7/8/Vista, support for Internet Explorer password text boxes, improved command line support, Unicode support to properly capture non-English language passwords, and not revealing the password inside of the password text-box itself (inside of the main window of the application only). The new version of BulletsPassView does have limitations; however, as it is not able to retrieve passwords displayed in the Chrome, FireFox, or Opera web browsers as well as the network and dial-up passwords on Windows. This is due to the fact that these applications do not save the password stored behind the asterisks to improve security.

Steps to Use BulletsPassView

Step 1 – Download the appropriate version of BulletsPassView for your computer. Please note that if you are using a 64 bit Windows computer there is a different version of the software than for 32 bit computers. You can tell if your Windows computer is a 64 bit by selecting “Start,” “Control Panel,” and “System” menu options and the OS type will be listed about half-way down the subsequently displayed screen.

Step 2 – Double-click the executable file downloaded to launch the application. The BulletsPassView program does not require an installation process. On launch, the program will make a first scan to locate any password text-boxes actively displayed and show the result on the program’s main window.

Step 3 – Open a website in Internet Explorer that has a password saved which you need to recover. Then click the “Refresh” menu button on BulletsPassView or press the “F5” key on your computer to display the password. Alternatively, the application supports an “Auto Refresh” option that is selectable under the “Options” menu to automatically scan for new passwords every few minutes. On computers that are “memory challenged” this option can result in overall, slower operations.
Step 4 – Open the Windows command prompt by selecting the “Start” menu button and entering “CMD” in the search text field. Then, enter the fully qualified path to the BulletsPassView application and include “/stext <Filename>” followed by pressing the “Enter” key. This will save the list of passwords currently displayed on the computer’s screen to save the information in a simple text file.

BulletsPassView Command Line Options

BulletsPassView supports a number of command line options to save on-screen data into a number of formats to include text, XML, HTML, CSV.

/stext <Filename>       Save the list of bullet passwords into simple text file.

/stab <Filename>         Save the list of bullet passwords into a tab-delimited text file.

/scomma <Filename> Save the list of bullet passwords into a comma-delimited text file (csv).

/stabular <Filename>   Save the list of bullet passwords into a tabular text file.

/shtml <Filename>      Save the list of bullet passwords into HTML file (Horizontal).

/sverhtml <Filename>  Save the list of bullet passwords into HTML file (Vertical).

/sxml <Filename>        Save the list of bullet passwords into XML file.

How to View Stored Passwords on a MAC

On computers than run the MAC OS X operating system, when a user tells their computer to store a password associated with an application, website, or wireless network, the information is saved on the computer’s hard drive. OS X uses the Keychain Access utility to help Mac users to look-up and manage their stored passwords.

Step 1 – Launch the OS X “Finder” by clicking the menu icon on the computer’s dock. Then, navigate to the “Utilities” folder which is located under the “Applications” section on the Mac hard drive.

Step 2 – Open the “Keychain Access” program icon to launch the password utility application. Then, select “Passwords” from the options located in the lower corner of the program window.

Step 3 – Choose the stored password that you have forgotten or want to view the data associated followed by clicking the “Information” menu button. A new application window will then be displayed showing all information associated with the password.

Find Stored Passwords Using Cain & Abel

Cain & Abel is able to disclose or recover stored passwords on computers using the Windows operating system (OS). The application is distributed as freeware and includes the capability to conduct password-box revealing, network sniffing, brute-force, and dictionary attacks. The application does not exploit software bugs or vulnerabilities to ensure a higher quality of service. The primary purpose of the software is to simplify the recovery of passwords and credentials for network administrators, security professionals, and security software vendors. The current version of the software is faster than previous versions and provides support for encrypted protocols such as SSH-1 and HTTPS.

Find Stored Passwords in ZIP Files Using ALZip

ALZip is freeware produced by ESTSoft and is designed to recover lost or forgotten passwords from ZIP files. ALZip allows end-users to compress, uncompress, and recover lost passwords for zip file archives. The application has a “Password Recovery” menu option that when selected will recover the lost information for the end-user.

Other Popular Password Recovery Tools

Some of the other popular password recovery tools found are the freeware utilities produced by NirSoftFreeware, Ultimate ZIP Cracker, and the Password Recovery Tool for MS Access 1.

NirSoftFreeware has a number of handy freeware utilities for recovering lost passwords from IE, Outlook, and various Instant Messaging clients.

Ultimate ZIP Cracker (shareware from VDGSoftware) recovers passwords from ZIP, ARJ, MS Word, and MS Excel formats. The program supports Brute Force attacks, Smart, Dictionary, Date, and Customized searches when recovering passwords associated with the supported file formats.

Password Recovery Tool for MS Access 1 (from Hongxin Technology & Trade) is a free tool to recover MS Access passwords. The application provides support for MS Access database files through the 2003 version. The ability to recover passwords for newer versions of Access is not stated to be supported.