Bypass Windows Logons with the Utilman.exe Trick

Utilman.exe is a built in Windows application that is designed to allow the user to configure Accessibility options such as the Magnifier, High Contrast Theme, Narrator and On Screen Keyboard before they log onto the system.
This was designed to help people who are hard of sight, hearing or mobility to log onto Windows themselves without the need of outside help. Its a great feature for disabled people but it opens up a security hole that we can take advantage of to bypass Windows logons.

Bypassing the Windows logon comes in handy if our clients have forgotten their logon password, their user profiles were corrupted or malware was interfering with the system before login.

This works because the user can trigger Utilman by pressing Windows Key + U before Windows logon. This will load up the Utilman.exe executable which resides in the Windows\System32 directory. If you swap the Utilman.exe file with something else like cmd.exe, you have access to the command prompt running SYSTEM privileges. SYSTEM is an account with the highest possible privileges on Windows which similar to the root account on Unix systems.

Here are the step by step instruction on how to do this.

WARNING: 
You can do a lot of damage to a system if you dont know what you are doing. Technibble accepts no responsibility if something goes wrong.

First of all, we will need a way to access the file system to swap out Utilman.exe with something else like cmd.exe. There are a few ways to achieve this:

• Remove the operating system hard drive from the target system and slave it into another system with a working operating system. From there you can swap out the files on the slave drive
• Use a Boot CD like UBCD4Win and use the file management software there
• Use the Windows Vista or 7 DVD

In this example we will be using the Windows 7 DVD. To begin, boot from your Windows 7 DVD and when you reach the first screen asking about the language, currency and keyboard format, Click Next.

On the next page, down in the lower left hand side, click on the “Repair your computer” link.

Next, select the “Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows. Select an operating system to repair” option, choose an operating system from the list and Click Next.

You will now have an option to “Choose a recovery tool”. Select Command Prompt.

You should now have a Command Prompt Window open. Type in the following commands:

C:\
cd windows\system32
ren utilman.exe utilman.exe.bak
copy cmd.exe utilman.exe

This will navigate to the system32 directory, rename utilman.exe to utilman.exe.bak, make a copy of cmd.exe and name it utilman.exe.

Remove the DVD and reboot the system.

Once the computer boots up normally, press the key combination Windows Key + U and you should get a Command Prompt. If the Command Prompt doesnt appear, press Alt+Tab as the Command Prompt may appear behind the Logon screen. From here, you can run many (if not all) of the commands you can normally use in Command Prompt.

Resetting an Existing Users Password

WARNING: 
If you reset a users account password. This will permanently lose access to the users encrypted files. Be sure to back these up.

To reset an existing users password, we need type the text below. In this example, we will be changing JohnDoe’s password to “hunter2”.
net user JohnDoe hunter2

You should be able to log in with this new password straight away.

If you dont know what the username on the system actually is, you can see a list of the users by typing:
net user

Creating a New User Account

To create a new user account in the Command Prompt (Username: NewGuy. Password: abc123), and add them to the Administrators usergroup type:
net user NewGuy abc123 /add
net localgroup Administrators NewGuy /add
Again, you should be able to login straight away with this new account.

Reverting Changes

To restore utilman.exe, in the Command Prompt type in:
C:
cd windows\system32
del utilman.exe
ren utilman.exe.bak utilman.exe
Then reboot the system.

To remove the new user account you just created earlier, type in:
net user NewGuy /delete

That’s all there is to it.

How To Speed Up Your Android Phone By Disabling Animations

Very often Android smartphone owner search for options to speed up their devices. Sometimes, the Android animations degrade your phone’s performance. By enabling the Developer options and changing a couple of simple settings, you can disable animations and speed up your Android phone in few steps. 

ndroid operating system allows the OEMs to change the look and feel of the software by incorporating different themes, icons, and animations. Apart from improving the aesthetics, these elements also improve the overall user experience.

With each new version of Android, Google rolls out new types of animations. However, if you don’t own a powerful hardware, these animations can become a curse. They can irritate you due to their slow speed at which they play when you click on some icon. So, for some users, these animations act as performance killers rather than improving the overall experience.

I’m pretty sure that such frustrating situations have been faced by many of you. However, Android doesn’t provide you a direct option to turn these animations off. To speed up your Android phone by disabling animations, you need to enable the Developer options and find relevant settings. By making these changes, you should notice an immediate performance improvement on your Android device.

How to disable animations on your Android smartphone?

I’ll be explaining how to disable animations in simple steps. Please read ahead:

Enabling Developer options:

• To make these changes, first you’ll need to enable the developer mode on your Android smartphone. It’s hidden by default and you need to make some changes to enable it. To do this, open the Settings screen and scroll down to the bottom. There, tap on the About phone option.
• In this window, again scroll down to the bottom and look for Build number. Tap this field repeatedly.
• After tapping few times, you’ll be seeing a message — “You are now a developer“.
• Now, you need to go back to the Settings screen and scroll to the bottom. There, you’ll be able to spot the new Developer options field. Now tap on it and proceed with the process to disable the animations in your Android smartphone.

Disabling the animations:

• After opening the Developer options screen, you need to turn On the option by sliding the switch at the top. This will enable the hidden options and allow you to make changes. 
• You’ll see a small dialog asking you to allow development settings. Tap onOK and proceed to disable animations on your Android smartphone.
  
• You need to scroll and down in this screen and look for different options with animation keywords. You’ll be spotting different options like Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale.
• Now tap on each of these options and select the Animation off option. Please note that the default value is set as 1x. So, if you want to speed up your phone without entirely disabling the animations, you can select the Animation scale 0.5x option. This will boost the speed of animations and your phone’s speed.
• These changes won’t take effect immediately. For that, you’ll need to restart your Android launcher after making the animations changes. To do so, open the Android launcher app from the Apps option in Settings, and select the Force Stop option. Now tap your Android smartphone’s home button and it’ll relaunch your Android launcher.

After applying these simple steps, the animation effects in your smartphone will be disabled and you’ll notice a speed improvement. So, from now on, if you’ll tap on some app or make a transition to another screen, the change will take place as soon as possible. Now, you phone won’t play animations and use processing juice to render them.

Important: Please note that the extent of speed improvement also depends on your Android phone and its hardware capabilities. If completely turning off animations causes some problems in certain apps, decrease the delay to 0.5x.

Did you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.

Also Read: How To Get +1 Phone Number and use it in Whatsapp

5 Reasons Google Allo Is Better Than WhatsApp, Really?

The new instant messaging app Google Allo has amazing features like Smart Reply, Incognito mode, Shout/Whisper, and Google Assistant AI bot. But it faces tough competition from the Facebook-owned veteran WhatsApp. Can Google Allo take the place of WhatsApp? Here are 5 reasons why Google Allo is better than WhatsApp.
oogle Allo is a recently launched instant messaging app that could be thought of as a competitor to the champion WhatsApp. Why I’m saying this because it has some killer features which can put it ahead of other players. Allo will also avenge Hangouts and Gmail which are Google’s failed instant messaging attempts.

WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging app with around 1 billion monthly active users. That’s why the newest entrant in the instant messaging space needs to defeat WhatsApp in order to become the king. So, here are five reasons Google Allo can replace WhatsApp:

1. Google Assistant

The search giant’s biggest play is Google Assistant which announced at the Google I/O. Assistant is included in Google Allo as a preview version. Unlike WhatsApp, you can search people, places, food joints, etc. inside your instant messaging app.

WhatsApp’s daddy Facebook is working to enable alerts for various purposes like flight timings and bank notifications. This intention was revealed when WhatsApp announced that they will be sharing your contact number with Facebook.

The Assistant is directly aimed to compete with other virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana. But the Google Assistant has a lot to learn before it could challenge the biggies. Google has plans to put Google Assistant in place of Google Now in its Android OS.

2. Smart Reply

The smart reply feature analyzes your conversations and then suggests reply texts accordingly. This comes handy when you don’t want to type much for instance while you’re driving. Although, I won’t recommend you to do that. The smart reply feature can also analyze images and make a reply suggestion about them.

Two of my friends had a chat by the smart reply suggestions only. The best part of the conversation was that the smart reply feature started giving text suggestions in Hinglish – a combination of the Hindi and English language used in India. And they ended up having a chat which made sense.

3. Send Free SMS

You can message your friends who have a WhatsaApp account. But what if you want to contact someone who doesn’t have the WhatsApp installed on their device. You won’t be able to send the message. But you can do so in Google Allo. Your contacts who don’t have the Allo app installed can receive texts as SMS. And it will cost nothing to you or the recipient.

4. Incognito Mode

News has been floating around that Google will not be sticking to their earlier decision of not keeping user conversation details on its servers permanently. Earlier, Google said it would be beneficial to users’ privacy if the data is stored temporarily. With Allo coming into existence, it seems Google doesn’t care about the aforementioned privacy drama. Now, the company gives the reason that the conversation would be used to fuel their Smart Reply feature and make it more efficient and useful.

At least, Google Allo has the advantage of the “Incognito Mode”. Using incognito mode in Google Allo would disable Google from storing any of your messages on its servers, in fact, reading them at all. Also, the messages would disappear from the recipient’s device after the specified time limit.

5. Whisper/Shout, Emoticons, and fresh Stickers

Google Allo has got some amazing formatting features which you’ll love and one of them is Whisper/Shout. Press and hold the send button to change the size of the text and emoticons using the slider. The app also has some great emoticons and fresh sticker sets out of the box. On the other hand, WhatsApp also has some cool text formatting features which most people don’t know.

Allo Vs WhatsApp

Google made Allo from scratch, not as a successor to the Hangouts. The messaging app has received appraisals for including the AI chatbot and the smart reply features. But it has also faced backlashes from whistleblowers like Edward Snowden who has been tweeting about the security concerns Allo can pose in front of the users. But some Twitteratis are asking Snowden why a normal user should care about data being stored in data centers.

It’s good that the Google Allo has some amazing features. But WhatsApp is more mature and has an experience of six years. Allo will have to prove itself to a large number of WhatsApp users who put up the question, Why should I leave WhatsApp?

If you have something to add, tell us in the comments below.

Also Read: How To Remove Templates Footer Credit Links Without Redirecting To Other Site

Credits:-fossbytes

REMOVE FOOTER CREDIT LINKS IN BLOGGER TEMPLATES,WITHOUT REDIRECTING TO ANY WEBSITE.

Many websites like templateism, templateify, soratemplates, envothemes etc,are available on the internet which provides very stylish blogger template at very low cost. If you purchase their template than that template will not contain any credit link. These websites also provides most of the free blogger template with Non-removable credit link. Means, what? If you'll try to remove credit link from their template, then your blog will automatically redirect to their website (Homepage or a particular site). This is because they added some JavaScript into their free templates. In other hand, if you undo the changes and keep their original credit of template then it works perfectly.

Some days ago, I have visited one of these types of Blogger template websites where I have seen what? that some peoples (newbies blogger) are requesting how to remove credit/footer link from their template and the admin and other staff members are making jokes of that requests which result in creation of this topic.

Basically, newbies blogger don't want to invest money in purchasing any premium template and thus, use these types of free template for their blog. Many of them are trying to remove credit link but unsuccessful, if you are one of them then no need to wait more. Because here I have shared the method by which you can remove footer link and stop redirecting to any website.

How To Remove Credit Links?

Actually, these links are attached with some JavaScript or CSS. Finding JavaScript from the template and then removing is too boring and time consuming also it requires lot's of effort to do this. But in other hand, you can easily hide the credit/footer link via CSS. This method is very simple and takes only 2 minutes.

Steps To Remove Credit Links:

• First of all go to Blogger.com

• Just Login to your Blogger Profile and select your blog.

• Now go to Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML.

• Go to the footer and find the credit/footer link which needs to remove/hide. You'll find something like Copyright, credit or designed etc (Like picture shown below).

• Add the following line with your original copyright ID. (As shown in picture below).

style="visibility: hidden"

• Now, you need to Save your Template.

Recommended:-

10 Best Password Cracking Tool Of 2016

10 Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016 | Windows, Linux, OS X

Password cracking is an integral part of digital forensics and pentesting. Keeping that in mind, we have prepared a list of the top 10 best password cracking tools that are widely used by ethical hackers and cybersecurity experts. These tools–including the likes of Aircrack, John the Ripper, and THC Hydra–use different algorithms and protocols to crack the passwords on a Windows, Linux, and OS X system.

What is password cracking?

In the field of cybersecurity and cryptography, password cracking plays a very major role. It’s basically the process of recovering passwords to breach (or restore) the security of a computer system. You can easily relate it to repeatedly guessing your phone’s unlock pattern or pin.

So, why do we need to learn about password cracking and the tools used to do so? The purpose of password cracking revolves around recovering the forgotten passwords of our online accounts, computers, and smartphones. Password cracking is also used by system administrators as a preventive measure. They keep checking them on the regular basis to look for the weak links.

Talking about the process of password cracking, most methods involve the use of a computer that generates a vast set of password candidates. A desktop computer tests more than hundreds of millions of passwords per second. A password cracking tool performs this task easily and checks these candidates to reveal the actual password.

The time needed to crack a password is proportional to the length and strength of that password. That’s why users are advised to use complex passwords that are harder to guess. The password cracking speed of a tool also depends heavily on the cryptographic function that’s used to generate password hashes. Thus, a potent hashing function like bcrypt is preferred over the likes of SHA and MD5.

Types of password cracking attacks:

Here’s I’ll be listing various types of password cracking attacks that are generally used by attackers:

• Dictionary attack: This attack uses a file that contains a list of words that are found in the dictionary. This mode matches different combinations of those words to crack your device open.
• Brute force attack: Apart from the dictionary words, brute force attack makes use of non-dictionary words too.
• Rainbow table attack: This attack comes along with pre-computed hashes. Thus, this method is faster.

There are lots of other password cracking techniques like phishing, spidering, social engineering, shoulder surfing etc. Soon, I’ll be discussing them in detail in another article. So, let’s get started with our list of the best password cracking tools of 2016.

Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016:

Disclaimer: fossBytes is publishing this list just for educational purposes. We don’t promote malicious and unethical practices.

John the Ripper | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

John the Ripper is one of the most popular password cracking tools available around. This free password cracking tool is chiefly written in C programming language. Encompassing a customizable password cracker, John the Ripper comes as a combination of many password crackers into one suite.

Its ability to autodetect password hashtypes, makes it a preferred choice of ethical hackers to ensure security. A pro version of this tool is also available, offering better features and more effectiveness. Just like the popular hacking tool Metasploit, John also belongs to the Raspid7 family of security tools.

Supported platforms: John the Ripper is available for all major platforms, including Linux, Windows, DOS, and OS X.

Download link: John the Ripper

Aircrack-ng | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

Aircrack-ng (ng stands for new generation) is one of the best password cracking tools that hackers use to bump their annoying neighbors off their own Wi-Fi. Note that just like John the Ripper, Aircrack-ng is not a single tool. Instead, it’s a complete software suite that’s used to play with Wi-Fi networks.

In this free suite, you get a tool named aircrack that hackers use to crack WPA or WEP passwords. After analyzing the encrypted password packets, aircrack uses its cracking algorithm to break the passwords.

Using the well know attack techniques like FMS, this password cracking tool makes your job easier. Recently, a new attack named “PTW” has been included in the suite, which reduces the number of initialization vectors to break a WEP key.

Supported platforms: Aircrack is available for Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OX X, Windows, Android

Download link: Aircrack-ng

RainbowCrack | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

As the name suggests, RainbowCrack makes use of rainbow tables to crack password hashes. Using a large-scale time-memory trade-off, RainbowCrack performs an advance cracking time computation. According to your convenience, you are free to use the command line or graphical interface of RainbowCrack.

Once the pre-computation stage is completed, this top password cracking tool is about hundreds of times faster than a brute force attack. You also don’t need to prepare the rainbow tables yourselves. The developers have made different rainbow tables for LM, NTLM, MD5 and SHA1 available for free.

RainbowCrack’s GPU acceleration is another key feature that allows this free password cracking tool to offload the runtime computation to GPUs, reducing the cracking time even further.

Supported platforms: RainbowCrack is available for Windows and Linux

Download link: RainbowCrack

Cain and Abel | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

This renowned password cracking tool is a dependable software to recover various types of passwords using multiple techniques. Cain and Able lets you easily perform Dictionary, Brute-Force, and Cryptoanalysis attacks to crack encrypted passwords.

This multi-purpose hacking tool also comes with the ability to sniff the networks, record VoIP conversations, recover network keys, decode scrambled passwords, and analyze routing protocols.

Cain and Abel has two components. While Cain is the frontend application to recover your passwords and perform sniffing, Able is a Windows NT service that performs the role of traffic scrambling.

Supported Platforms: Cain and Abel is available for Windows

Download link: Cain and Abel

THC Hydra | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

Compared to other top password cracking tools, THC Hydra performs hacking attacks using numerous network protocols, including the likes of Asterisk, FTP, HTTP-Proxy, MYSQL, XMPP, Telnet, and more. Using these protocols, THC Hydra performs super fast brute-force and dictionary attacks against a login page.

This free-to-use tool helps the pentesters and security researchers to know how easy it would be to gain remote access to a system. This tool also lets you add new modules to increase the functionality. Via its GitHub page, you can also participate in the development process of THC Hydra.

Supported Platforms: THC Hydra is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OS X

Download link: THC Hydra

HashCat | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

HashCat claims to be the fastest and most advanced password cracking software available. Released as a free and open source software, HashCat supports algorithm like MD4, MD5, Microsoft LM hashes, SHA-family, MySQL, Cisco PIX, and Unix Crypt formats.

This password cracking tool comes in both CPU-based and GPU-based versions, HashCat and oclHashcat/cudaHashcat, respectively. Using a well-documented GPU acceleration, many algorithms can be easily cracked using this tool.

Different types of attacks performed by this tool include brute force attack, combinator attack, fingerprint attack, dictionary attack, hybrid attack, mask attack, table-lookup attack, PRINCE attack, permutation attack etc.

Supported Platforms: HashCat is available for Windows, Linux, OS X

Download link: HashCat

Crowbar | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

Crowbar is a brute forcing tool that’s widely popular in the pen testing scene. It gives you the control to decide what’s submitted to a web server. While most brute forcing tools use username and password to deploy SSH brute force, Crowbar makes use of SSH keys obtained during penetration tests.

This free tool is created to support the protocols that are rarely supported by other popular password cracking tools. Currently, Crowbar supports VNC key authentication, OpenVPN, SSP private key authentication, and Remote Desktop Protocol with NLA support.

Supported Platforms: Crowbar is available for Windows, Linux, OS X

Download link: Crowbar

OphCrack | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

Just like RainbowCrack, OphCrack is another popular and free password cracking tool that uses rainbow tables to crack the password hashes. It’s widely used to crack Windows log-in passwords. Thanks to its ability to import and use hashes from multiple formats and sources, OphCrack is known to crack the passwords of a Windows computer in few minutes.

Available conveniently as a Live CD, a pentester can use it and leave no trace behind. For cracking Windows XP, Vista, and 7, one can also grab freely available rainbow tables. For professional use, larger tables are available for purchase.

Supported Platforms: OphCrack is available for Windows

Download link: OphCrack

L0phtCrack | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

Just like OphCrack, L0phtCrack is known for easily cracking Windows passwords. Using a wide set of attacks like dictionary, hybrid, brute force, and rainbow tables, this password cracking tool can also be deemed useful in sniffing hashes.

It’s a great way to target Windows desktops, networked servers, Active Directory, and primary domain controllers. Its schedule routine audit functionality lets you perform scans at a convenient time.

Supported Platforms: L0phtCrack is available for Windows

Download link: L0phtCrack

DaveGrohl | Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016

For Mac OS X, DaveGrohl is an open source password cracking tool that’s preferred by the Apple security experts. With a completely modern object-oriented codebase in Version 3.0, DaveGrohl has been made more useful for developers and users.

With the help of dictionary and incremental attacks, this tool lets you crack a password in minutes. Its distributed mode allows you to perform attacks using different computers and crack the same password hash for faster results.

Supported Platforms: DaveGrohl is available for OS X

Download link: DaveGrohl

find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.