Whatever you do on your computer these days, it seems you have to create login details for just about everything. Online banking, shopping, social networking, email, forums, the list is endless. The sad thing is, there’s still a huge proportion of users who go online and use very weak passwords, even for services where their money or important personal data is concerned. As bad, if not worse, are people who may use a reasonably strong password, but then use the same one across the board meaning once somebody unscrupulous has that one password, they have access to everything. Believe it or not, I actually know someone who does that very thing, and he ignores my warnings of it being a very bad idea.
Although you may well be security conscious yourself and have secure and different passwords for every place that needs it, there may be family members or friends that still don’t quite take it as seriously as they should. As we know, passwords like ‘12345’, ‘dog’ or ‘2012’ are not exactly secure. If you want to find out how secure someone’s passwords are without actually invading their privacy, having a useful little tool to audit the passwords and give an idea of how strong or weak they are without revealing them to you, is something that’s worth a look.
One of Nirsofts many useful utilities is called Passowrd Security Scanner which does just that. It scans the system for passwords from a selection of applications and displays information about those passwords and how secure they are without telling you what they are.
Passowrd Security Scanner currently scans Internet Explorer 4.0 – 9.0, all versions of Firefox, Windows Dialup/VPN passwords, MSN/Windows Messenger, Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Mail. It would be good if more software was added to this list in future.
The program is available as a portable tool or setup installer, but whichever way you choose to use the program, you need to right click on it and select ‘Run As Administrator’.
The program will start the search for passwords upon startup, this may take a bit of time if there are a lot to get through. Once the scan is complete, you will be presented with several details about each password including; The item name (website, email address etc), the password type and the application it was found in, and the users name. To the right will be a series of columns giving some information about the password including its length and the frequency and type of the characters used.
A useful column to take note of, is the ‘Password strength‘ one which gives a score based on things like the number of characters, repeating characters and the type of characters. Obviously, 1 would be the lowest and weakest strength, and a score above 45 is considered ‘very strong’ by the program.
Double clicking on any row will bring up an easier to read window with all the details in a more visually pleasing form.
It’s worth reiterating that this program will not reveal any passwords, but offers more of a pointer to how secure or insecure a users passwords are and why. A website called PasswordMeter will help assess the strength of passwords and offer tips on how to make them stronger and more secure.
Passowrd Security Scanner is compatible with 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7
Check a Users Password Strength with Password Security Scanner is a post from: Raymond.CC Blog