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Friday Night Hacking

(full story now posted… sorry about the partial post earlier)

Last Friday I was over at my girlfriend’s parents’ house for dinner. My girlfriend’s sister had been nagging me for a while to install something on her laptop, and this time I finally remembered to bring the installation disc. Now, my girlfriend’s family are religious jews, which means there are a lot of things they are not allowed to do on Friday night. A partial list includes: Picking up a computer, turning a computer on, and installing software on a computer. According to these laws, she’s not even allowed to help me use the computer.

Okay, no problem. I got the laptop from her room and turned it on. The login screen showed up. I clicked her user and was asked for her password. Of course, I didn’t have her password, and she wasn’t allowed to give it to me.. Now we had a problem.

I didn’t want to leave the CD with her because I needed it for other purposes, so I had to get into that machine somehow. After several failed attempts at coercing the girl to give up her password, I realized I would just have to hack into it.

Luckily for me, hacking into a normal user’s Windows machine is usually pretty easy. I rebooted the machine, brought up the boot menu (’F8′), and chose ‘Start in Safe Mode’. The login screen came up and now there was an additional user on the list: Administrator. As I expected, no one had bothered to set the administrator password, and I managed to login by just clicking on it.

Once in, I reset her user’s password, rebooted into normal mode, and logged in with her user. I went back to the girl and told her what I did, and that if she wanted her old password to work she’d have to tell me what it was.. Finally she caved in and gave me her password, which I restored on her laptop. Isn’t it nice how a little technology can break down religious barriers?