MadSci Network: Computer Science
Query:

Re: tell me the name of the program to get the unknown password of any folder

Date: Tue Sep 7 13:39:02 2004
Posted By: Valdis Kletnieks, Staff, Computing Center, Virginia Tech Computing Center
Area of science: Computer Science
ID: 1091733803.Cs
Message:

Well, this is an interesting situation, because although I'm by profession a computer security expert, and know several ways to attack the problem, there are good and proper reasons for me to not answer the question directly. The most obvious and difficult problem is that I have no real assurance that in fact the problem folder is indeed yours (and not a professor's or classmate's). So even if there was a way to "get the password of any folder", I'd most probably not be sharing it with everybody (and I'd probably be getting in touch with the vendor to explain to them that the fact that such a program can be written is a severe security flaw in their system)...

The second biggest problem is that there are multiple different software packages out there that claim to provide password locking or encryption of files, and they all have different methods of doing their work. So there really isn't any "one way" to do it. (Incidentally, the vast majority of these tools are worse than useless - a few minutes with Google will often find pre-built tools to break the particular software package.)

So let's proceed on the idea that "Instant Access" is in fact the name of the problem software. There's many Google hits for +"instant access" +folder. The vast majority of these are merely hints for setting up easy-to-access shortcuts. However, two things stand out:

And I almost never manage to answer one of these security questions without suggesting that everybody make sure they have the latest software patches on their system, and anti-virus and anti-spyware software if appropriate for your system, and back up your system on a regular basis. Be careful - it's dangerous out there.


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