PassGuess 1.0.b is a password guesser. In some ways it's similar to Mackrak and KillerCracker, as it is in search for a password. But whilst the other programs are looking for UNIX passwords PassGuess is designed to guess passwords for any platform. Before you get your hopes up all too much let me tell you how it works. It asks you for letters, and compares these letters to a database of words, and saves the words that contain all of these letters into a text file. So it's not like PassGuess can guess anyone's password through phsycic powers, nor is it a keycapturer! It simply allows you to GUESS what someone's password COULD BE. In order for you to have a use from PassGuess you need to know some letters of the password you're looking for! For instance, let's say you peeked over the sholder of someone while they were typing in their password, but you didn't see all the letters he used. Well, then by giving PassGuess the letters you know, PassGuess will find for you which common passwords these letters can be found in. So it's no mirracle worker, but it's a handy tool! I know from my own experience that if you are trying to nick someone's password and only have a couple of letters then it gets frustrating trying to figure out what words can be derived from these letters, not to mention that I always forgot the letters by the time I could sit down to figure them out! And in this respect PassGuess can make things a lot simpler!
--==<How to Use PassGuess>==--
OK, let's say you got most of the letters the dork used in his password! Now how do you put PassGuess to work? First of all you have to specify the database of passwords you wanna use! You do this by selecting "Open word-list..." from the File menu! (read on for more info about word-lists). Then simply select "New search" from the File menu. This should bring up a dialog in which you should enter the letters you wish to seach for! Click on the "OK" button, and after a short while (the time here can varry depending on the size of the word-list. Please read the section dealing with the memory limitations of PassGuess if you are using large word-lists) a dialog will show up asking you where you want the resulting words to be saved. After you've finished saving, PassGuess should have generated a text file for you. You will not be able to open it, nor view it in PassGuess, but have to open it from within your favourite word processor. If the file is smaller than 32K you can open it in SimpleText and view it there by double clicking on the reult-file. You may ask why I didn't make PassGuess allow the user to preview the results in PassGuess itself and the answere to that is very simple! The Mac OS's built in TextEditor sux and I couldn't be bothered to write my own. Plus the text editor option would have slowed down PassGuess a bloody lot!
If you want to generate more than one searches, then after you finished saving the results, select "New search" from the File menu again. In PassGuess, unlike in miXed 1.0.b, the New option in the menu is fully functional without any KNOWN bugs. You can also select different word-lists after eachother without having to quit PassGuess.
--==<Word-Lists>==--
PassGuess is, however, only as good as your word-list is! The word-list is the database of passwords that PassGuess compares your letters to! So if it's large and well thought through then you are more likely to find the correct password, then if the word-list is contains only a couple of passwords! The file "Sample Word-List" (should be included with PassGuess 1.0.b) is a little word-list I threw together in 20 minutes. I went through some documents that listed frequent default passwords and commonly used passwords and copied them into this file. It's by no means a good source of passwords (it's preatty crap actually. Some words are in there several times.), but it gives you an idea of what the whole thing is about! I recomend that you get a large dictionary file for optimal search results!
--==<Making Your Own Word-Lists>==--
Any list of words is compatible with PassGuess as long as it follows these rules:
1. Every word is separated from the other by a return key (ASCII = 0D hex, or 13 dec).
2. That after the last word-list entry there is a return key.
2. The file is terminated with the hex-string "1111" (don't ask me why! I couldn't think of a better one)
3. The file's TYPE is "ProL" (the CREATOR doesn't matter)
If you don't understand this part I have my doubts to whether you are worthy of using PassGuess! But here's a short explanation:
A return key is the key you press in your word processor when you want to start a new line and has the ASCII equivalent of 0D.
To terminate a file with "1111" is a bit more tricky! First of all you need to have a program that does hex editing. Uhm... I recomend HexEdit by Jim Bumgardner! It's great and all you really need plus it's freeware. But any other software will do that allows you to view and edit the hexadecimal information of a file! So open up the word-list you wanna use in HexEdit. Make sure that after every entry in the list there is a return key (is the space after each word represented by a hex equivalient of 0D?). And after the last entry click into the hex field behind the last word and type "1111". I can recomend that you open up the included "sample word-list" and see how things are organized there!
Dude (dudette)! If you don't know how to change the TYPE and CREATOR of a file then you REALLY shouldn't be using PassGuess. Read my file on TYPEs and CREATORs in HackAddict3! Anyway, the TYPE of the word-list HAS TO BE "ProL" (note the capital P and L) if you want PassGuess to be able to read it! I introduced this precaution as once I selected a non word-list and had PassGuess freeze in a neverending routine! To change the TYPE of a file can be a bit of a drag, but in the end it'll be worth it!
--==<Limitations of PassGuess>==--
PassGuess is no mirracle worker! As I said before it is only as good as your word-list is. But even if you have the most complete Webster Dictionary file as a word-list, the password you're looking for might not be there. This is simply because the password you're looking for might not be in English. And since passwords can be anything a person wants it to be, it doesn't even have to be a word. It could be "?@#@??!". So even with PassGuess you're way to sucess, in terms of guessing someone's password, is not 100% complete! First of all let me start off with a detailed description of how PassGuess compares the entered letters to the word-list, and then I will give a brief description of what type of limitations this involves.
OK so you specified the word-list, and the letters you want to search for in the list.
1. PassGuess takes the first letter from the letters you entered (known as search string from now on), and compares it's ASCII value to the ASCII value of the first entry in the word-list. If PassGuess finds a letter in the word-list entry that matches the letter you entered then it sets a flag.
2. PassGuess then repeats step 1 as many times as there are letters in the search string. For example if you entered "abc" into the dialog box it will do the above loop 3 times.
3. Then it compares the number of flags set to the number of letters in the search string. If these two numbers are the same then it regrads the word as a match and stores the word-list entry in the memory, to be saved to disk later.
4. Then it takes the next entry in the word list and jumps up to step 1.
OK so what limitations does this involve?
1. Depending on the word list, capital and lower-case letters are ignored. Meaning, if your word-list has only capital letters and you enter lower case letters in the dialog box, you will not get any matching results. This is because "A" has a different ASCII value than "a". So first see what cases your word-list uses, to see if it's worth it having captial letters in your seach string!
2. Double letters do not show up in the search result. For instance searching for the letters "cool" will give exactly the same results as "col". So don't bother using the same letter twice.
3. The built in memory buffer, to the amount of words that can be saved to disk is 500K. So if your search result will have more than 500K worth of results then an error will appear! (more about this in the discussion of errors)
4. If your word-list includes punctiation marks or any other non-letter characters then you can search for these with PassGuess, but don't expect PassGuess to give you a list of every word-list entry with a "*" infront of it! A lot of guessing someone's password is mental work. If you see a person use "!" as part of his/her password then don't search for the "!" sign in PassGuess! Search for the other letters, then experiment around with the "!" on your own!
5. You can enter a lot of letters into the dialog box, but use your head to decide how much you actually need! I mean most english words are under 10 letters long, so why search for 15 different letters? Not to mention the fact that most passwords are no longer than 7 characters!
--==<Error Dialogs>==--
PassGuess will generate error dialogs if the following situations occur:
1. If there is a hardware error reading whilst the word-list (for example if the disk is damaged).
2. If there is a hardware error while saving the Result file (for example if the disk is damaged).
3. If you press a letter key other than that in a dialogbox. (This is an error remaining from miXed 1.0.b as I used that program as a backbone for PassGuess 1.0.b)
4. If you try to do a search before specifying a word-list.
5. An error dialog might show up if there is a lack of memory. This error can occur under two circumstances. If there is not enough memory to read the word-list into the RAM, or if the search results exceed 500K! In the first situation, you can try to increase the memory of PassGuess in the Finder (refer to your Macintosh User guide on how to allocate more memory to an application). If increasing the RAM does not help, then it might be that there are too many results from the search. You can try to reduce the search results by adding another letter to the search string. Other than that I can't help you as PassGuess can at the moment not handle more than 500000 bytes of information that is supposed to be saved to the disk. (no need to try and increase the RAM as that has nothing to do with this problem!)
--==<Memory and Speed Issues>==--
PassGuess comes with 1MB of RAM alocated to it. I have however noticed that if a large word-list is used PassGuess might freeze. If you alocate more RAM to PassGuess that should take care of this problem! With 2MB or RAM PassGuess had no problem handeling a 1.1 MB word-list. If you don't have enough RAM for your current word-list, then try to break up the word-list. Read the "Making Your Own Word-Lists" section for more info on how to make your own word-lists!
On my PB 5300cs 100MHz/16MB RAM, it takes a second or two for PassGuess to search through a 1.1 MB word-list file. So on a slower computer this might take a couple of seconds. I don't think you should have to wait more than 1 minute for a 1MB search on any Mac, but I haven't been able to confirm this! I didn't put up a progress bar or anything like that as that would just waste time! But as long as the mouse is moving, you're computer hasn't frozen! If the mouse doesn't react, however, then your computer HAS frozen. I can recomend that you allocate more RAM to PassGuess and try the search again! (these types of frezes should not occur unless you're using a large word-list!)
--==<Known Bugs>==--
So far the only Bug I know of occurs only if the word-list is too big. Then your computer might freze. However you can fix this problem by adding more RAM to PassGuess.
--==< Freeware >==--
PassGuess 1.0.b is a freeware. This means that you don't have to pay for using it, and you may distribute it freely to whomever you want, but only under these conditions:
1.When distributing PassGuess 1.0.b you will include this "Read Me!" file as well as the "Sample Word-List"!
2.You will not change anything in the application PassGuess 1.0.b nor any of the included files, without my permission. (If you want to change it around I probably won't refuse your request, it's just that I'd like to have a copy of the new program)
3.You will not blame me for any damage that is done to your (or anybody else's) computer because of miXed 1.0.b.
--==< Disclaimer >==--
I take NO responsibility to whatever happens to anybody's computer because of the use of PassGuess 1.0.b or any related use. I have tested PassGuess 1.0.b extensively not only in it's final state of existence, but also as I was developing it. I have tested PassGuess 1.0.b on a PowerBook running under OS 8.0, as well as on a Performa 400 running under System 7.1 without any problems. The coding (as I released this software originally) did NOT contain any "destructive" traps nor purposes (nor was it virus infected to the best of my knowledge!). So if anything goes wrong because of PassGuess 1.0.b I WILL NOT take responsibility for it! If you use PassGuess 1.0.b it's under YOUR OWN responsibility!
--==< THE END >==--
PassGuess 1.0.b may be updated in the future if I'm bored or there's any demand for it!
