On other devices where you can’t gain access to the files, you can still reset the device and gain access to it without knowing a password. These tricks all require physical access to the device.
Windows
There are many ways to reset a Windows password. Windows allows you to create a password reset disk that can reset your password in an approved way — create a disk first and you can use it if you ever need it.
Resetting a password without an official tool is fairly simple. For example, the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor works well for this. First, you’ll need to boot from a special disc or USB drive — either a live Linux system or a specialized Offline NT Password & Registry Editor boot disc. The tool can edit the Windows registry, allowing you to clear the password associated with the user account. You can then boot into Windows and log into the account without a password.
Even if you’re using Windows 8 with a Microsoft account, you can always reset the password of the built-in Administrator account to gain access.
To protect against this, you could password-protect your BIOS and restrict booting from external devices. Someone with physical access to the PC could reset the BIOS password to bypass this. Encrypting your Windows system drive with something like BitLocker would prevent the registry from being accessed and modified with this tool — encryption is the only good protection.
Linux
We’ll use Ubuntu as a concrete example here. Ubuntu offers a recovery mode in its default Grub boot menu — select Advanced options for Ubuntu and select Recovery mode. You’ll see the boot menu while booting your computer — if you don’t, you can hold the Shift key as you boot and the menu will appear. You can easily boot directly to a root shell prompt from here.
This option isn’t necessary, as you can just press the e button to edit Ubuntu’s boot options and boot directly to a root shell prompt from within the main Grub menu. You’ll then be able to use the root shell to reset and change passwords on the system. If the Grub boot menu is locked and password-protected, you can still boot to Linux live media and change your password from there.
Once again, encryption would prevent your system from being accessed and modified without your encryption passphrase. We used Ubuntu as an example, but almost every Linux distribution uses Grub and few people set a Grub password.
Mac OS X
Macs have a built-in password reset tool, and it’s very easy to access. This option is available in recovery mode. You’ll need to restart your Mac by clicking the Apple menu and selecting Restart. Press and hold the Command + R keys as the computer boots and it will boot into recovery mode.
Click the Utilities menu in recovery mode, select Terminal, type resetpassword into the terminal, and press Enter. You’ll see the Reset Password utility, which allows you to reset the password of a any user account on the Mac. You can also access this tool from a Mac OS X installation disc.
To prevent your Mac’s password from being reset, you could enable FileVault disk encryption on your Mac, set a firmware password inside recovery mode, or both.
Chrome OS
Your Chromebook’s user account password is your Google account password. You could reset your Google account password on the web to regain access.
Let’s say you have a Chromebook you want to use, but you can’t sign in. Perhaps you’ve forgotten the Google password associated with the device. Perhaps an old Google account is considered the device’s owner account. In this scenario, you can boot the Chromebook to the sign-in screen and press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + R at the same time. You’ll be prompted to factory reset your Chromebook with Powerwash. After you reset it, you can log in with another Google account and that Google account will be considered the owner account. This will erase all data on the device, but most Chromebook data is synced online.
There’s no way to gain access to a user’s files without their passwo
Comments
Post a Comment