Most if not all software has an option for you to save the password for your convenience so that you don’t need to retype the password each time you want to login to use the software. The password are stored on the computer either in the registry or an external file in an encrypted or clear text depending on how the software is being programmed. One example is the popular FTP client FileZilla saves the passwords in an unencrypted clear-text to a XML file. Some software doesn’t even erase the saved password after uninstalling it. This creates a huge security problem where compromised computers that hackers has full access to is able to search for the passwords that are saved on your computer and misuse them. There are recovery tools or some people calls them as “stealers” that are being sold in underground forums and all it takes is for the user to run the payload and the saved passwords are sent to the hacker. Other than the stealers, most remote administration tool (RAT) trojan also comes with password stealer function.
One of the best way to determine how many recoverable passwords that are saved on your computer is by using a legitimate universal password recovery software. These software allows computer technicians to help their customers to recover their password if they forgotten about it or you can even use it personally on your computer as a security audit. If this password recovery tool cannot find any saved passwords on your computer, chances are the tools made by the bad guys won’t find it as well, keeping your data temporarily safe rather than instantly being stolen.
Multi Password Recovery (MPR) is one of such legitimate software that is able to support recovering saved passwords from over 100 popular application that are installed on your computer. If you think that you’ve only saved passwords on your web browser, you may be wrong because most users also saves their password on email clients (Outlook), FTP clients (FileZilla), instant messengers (Windows Live Messenger), etc and they are all supported by MPR.
Using Multi Password Recovery is really easy. After installation, run the program and it will automatically start scanning your Windows system for any recoverable password. Multi Password Recovery is a shareware that cost $19.95 and the only limitation in using the program without purchasing a license is the password are not displayed which is useful for auditing but not for recovery.
Other than that, you can also use to reveal password that are hidden under the asterisks. Click on Other at the menubar, select “Show passwords behind asterisks” and a small window will open. Now move your mouse cursor to the box that shows the asterisks and press the Ctrl key. Go back to the small window that you’ve opened from Multi Password Recovery earlier and you will find that the passwords are being extracted and shown in clear text. Do take note that this feature works only on software installed on your Windows computer but not on web forms displayed on your web browser.
There is also a portable version available to download from the official download page and it works perfectly on all versions of Windows.