Cain and Abel
Cain and Abel is a program specially developed for recovering passwords for the Microsoft Windows operating system (Cain & Abel, n.d.). With its help, it becomes possible to crack encrypted passwords with the use of Brute-Force, Dictionary and Cryptanalysis attacks, by revealing password boxes, sniffing the network, recording VoIP conversations, recovering wireless network keys, decoding scrambled passwords, and analyzing routing protocols. The program covers certain weaknesses/aspects that exist in the protocol’s standards, as well as in the caching mechanisms and authentication methods.
Cain and Abel was developed so as to help teachers, administrators, forensic staff, security consultants, and others who plan to use it for reasons that don’t break ethical principles (Cain & Abel 4.9.42, n.d.). The author of the program warns not to use it for any illegal activities. He also warns that there can be loss of information and/or certain damage caused to the system and in order to prevent such occurrences, it is necessary to study the License Agreement carefully.
Although the program is safe for the system, antivirus and antispyware programs define the program as malware or infected, which is due to the parts of its code that are used to decode the passwords. Thus, security programs tend to consider such actions of the software as being dangerous for the system. For users it is clear that the program was developed with the goal to recover passwords, which means that in fact Cain and Abel are not malware and such reaction of antivirus programs should be considered as “false positive” and ignored. Still, it is very important to use the system for legal purposes and be careful not to cause damage to the system (Zorz, 2009).
References
Cain & Abel. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.oxid.it/cain.html.
Cain & Abel 4.9.42. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Decrypting-Decoding/Cain-and-Abel.shtml
Zorz, M. (2009). Cain & Abel, the password recovery tool. Retrieved from http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1266
