Thought your Windows password was safe? Well, think again. As processors are getting faster and more powerful, password cracking is becoming much easier. Ophcrack is a free, open source hash cracker (similar to brute force cracking but uses precomputed tables). Ophcrack uses RainbowTables, an implementation of Philippe Oechslin‘s faster time-memory trade-off technique, to compute hash tables and crack your password in about 30 minutes (depending on your processor).
Category archives: security
How to Check for NSA Wire Taps
29Jun06If you’re a Windows user, fire up an MS-DOS command prompt. Now type tracert followed by the domain name of the website, e-mail host, VoIP switch, or whatever destination you’re interested in. Watch as the program spits out your route, line by line.
C:\tracert nsa.gov 1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 12.110.110.204 [...] 7 11 ms 14 ms 10 ms as-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [64.159.0.218] 8 13 12 19 ms ae-23-56.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.123.173] 9 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms 192.205.33.17 10 88 ms 92 ms 91 ms tbr2-p012201.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.186] 11 88 ms 90 ms 88 ms tbr1-cl2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.41] 12 89 ms 97 ms 89 ms tbr1-cl4.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.29] 13 89 ms 88 ms 88 ms ar2-a3120s6.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.8.65] 14 102 ms 93 ms 112 ms 12.127.209.214 15 94 ms 94 ms 93 ms 12.110.110.13 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * *
In the above example provided by Wired News, traffic is jumping from Level 3 Communications to AT&T’s network in San Francisco, presumably over the OC-48 circuit that AT&T tapped on February 20th, 2003, according to the Klein docs.
The magic string you’re looking for is sffca.ip.att.net. If it’s present immediately above or below a non-att.net entry, then — by Klein’s allegations — your packets are being copied into room 641A, and from there, illegally, to the NSA.
