Hacking QuickCrypt Version 1 on windows 98

[nihil]

Hmmmm,

Windows 98 has CRAP encryption. I don't remember EXACTLY what it used, but it was really REALLY low.

Actually, Windows 3.x/95/98/98SE/Millennium/NT4.0 did not have ANY file encryption inbuilt, which is why people had to use third party applications.

EFS [Encrypting File System] started with Windows 2000 Professional and requires the NTFS file system version 3.0 or higher.

In fact, the home user (9.x/ME) versions of Windows had no security whatsoever. If you could operate the I/O switch, you were administrator. The only purpose of the user ID and password was to allow multiple user profiles and desktops. That way each user would only see their stuff, rather than every application that was installed on the machine. Anyone could access everything on the machine, and the default user and password was blanks, and had FULL ADMIN rights.

With such computers, anybody who could access it at any time could use it for whatever they wanted, including planting incriminating evidence

Security is a double edged sword; sometimes it protects you, and other times it paints you into a corner

The problem with the sort of Encryption available to most people, is that it was made back when multi core GHz Processors weren't on Desktops of the average user.

That isn't the real issue, it's HOW the product works that matters. QuickCrypt simply puts password protection on a file and encrypts its contents so they cannot be examined using other utilities/applications, other than in their encrypted form. I think that it is safe to assume that QuickCrypt is installed on the machine in question, so when you try to open an encrypted file it will ask you for the password.............that is all you have to crack. Decryption is totally impractical as it uses the Blowfish algorithm.

EDIT:

I would guess that it uses Blowfish to hash the password (just like OpenBSD?), in which case they will need to brute force it, which shouldn't take very long with Rainbow Tables. I think that it is wise to assume that they will have RTs large enough to handle a 15 character pass?