Passware

Passware expands to grab Facebook and Google passwords

Passware Inc. is a forensics security company that develops investigation software kits to reveal passwords on seized computers. Last year it released a version of its kit that allows an investigator to reveal the passwords of Apple's FileVault encryption technology, along with those for similar technologies such as TrueCrypt, PGP Disk, and BitLocker. Recently the kit has gained more features and now has the ability to snoop through a system's hibernation file for Google and Facebook account passwords.

The Passware snooping technology works by accessing a system's memory either through a port that has direct memory access (… Read more

Security concerns on Apple's FileVault decryption via FireWire

Yesterday's news of Passware's ability to decrypt FileVault-encrypted Macs in under an hour may have some people concerned about what this means for Mac security. After all, the purpose of encryption is to keep people from easily accessing the data on your drive, and yet Passware shows that in the hands of a capable person, your drive's encrypted contents might quite easily be uncovered.

Security experts speculate that the 128-bit XTS-AESW encryption used in FileVault would take millions of years to crack with a brute-force approach, so while Passware's approach clearly does not employ a brute-force … Read more

FileVault 2 easily decrypted, warns Passware

One of the welcome features in OS X Lion was the replacement of Apple's first-generation FileVault file encryption technology, which only encrypted the home folder, with a new whole-disk encryption approach.

Unlike the first FileVault, which required a number of workarounds and still had compatibility problems with various programs and utilities, the new technology is transparent to the operating system and enhances security since it not only encrypts user data but also all other data on the drive, including system caches, application files, and system configuration files that might contain some personal information.

FileVault 2 requires the hard drive … Read more

Password sleuth

It's a sickening feeling when you realize you've forgotten an important password, especially when it's a password for something that doesn't have a password recovery feature. Passware Kit is a powerful program that can help recover unknown passwords, but it comes at a price, both in terms of money and time.

The program's interface is sleek and attractive, with its major features displayed on a home screen. Users can choose to recover a file password, recover Internet and network passwords, reset the Windows administrator password, or search the computer for protected files. We tried the … Read more