by Windows IT Security editors
Many free (or nearly free) break-in tools are readily available on the Internet. You can easily find these utilities by searching the Internet with the keywords break-in tools.
You should take a quick look at the free break-in utilities for two reasons:
1. The quantity, general availability, and feature set of these tools should give you a wake-up call to physically secure your servers and defend against their potential use in your environment.
2. You might find some of these tools useful and wat to try them in a test environment.
Here's a sampling of free tools that will probably keep you awake at night:
Adanced Windows Password Recovery enables recovery of logon passwords, Microsoft .NET passport passwords, stored user passwords, RAS and dial-up passwords, passwords to VPN connections, and passwords and access rights to shared resources.
http://www.elcomsoft.com/awpr.html
Austrumi is a Linux bootable .ISO image for recovering Windows NT passwords.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/austrumi
Emergency Boot CD is a bootable CD-Rom that lets you perform emergency boots, recover the Master Boot Record (MBR) of hard disks, and change the password of any local user account. The tool also lets you recover deleted files, perform disk wipes, recover data from an accidentally formatted disk, and copy and move files.
http://ebcd.pcministry.com
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor lets you change the password of any local user account. It works offline, so you boot from a floppy disk or CD-Rom.
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd
XP Password Cracker doesn't change an Administrator password, but it tells you the existing passord for that account.
http://xpcracker.mine.nu/xpcracker