The Internet is unfortunately notorious for offering a wide variety of tools for criminal and hacking purposes. However, some of these tools can be put to good use, namely to strengthen your Windows security. Below is a selection of such tools. Just bear in mind that they should be used for positive purposes and not to harm others.
A selection of hacking tools to better protect yourself under Windows
Testing Wi-Fi network passwords
The security of a Wi-Fi network depends to a large extent on the password used. That's why Wi-Fi passwords are often very long and complex. But you may be in a place (cafe, restaurant, hotel, etc.) where you can't change the password, and where you may have doubts about its impermeability.
In any case, use a VPN to secure your connection: this tool offers a secure tunnel where your connection data is encrypted, and therefore unreadable by third parties.
Beware of free PC VPN solutions, and prefer a more reliable and secure paid service. This tool also lets you mask your IP address, ensuring greater confidentiality.
If you'd like to test the strength of a Wi-Fi network password, there's a tool for the job, Aircrack-ng, which searches for the pre-shared key between the access point and the client computer for data encryption. This tool only works with a certain number of selected Wi-Fi chipsets and antennas, nor is it easy to use. However, for a security test, this feature is perfect: if Aircrack-ng can decrypt your Wi-Fi password, it's because it's too short and presents risks.
Replace your Windows password
The first password you enter after switching on your computer is usually the Windows password. If you no longer know this password, your data is not lost: you can boot the computer with a boot key or boot CD, for example, and copy important documents to another medium. But in this case, you usually have no choice but to reinstall the operating system.
The free Offline NT Password & Registry Editor offers a solution. It doesn't even try to decipher the existing password, but lets you overwrite it and simply replace it with a character combination of your choice.
Use a secure browser
There's nothing wrong with using a conventional browser for your daily online activities, although you should probably switch to a secure Windows browser, instead of using Chrome.
However, if you want to remain as secure and anonymous as possible in certain circumstances, no browser comes close to Tor, widely used by hackers, as well as all Internet users wishing to strengthen their privacy. The Tor browser is an indispensable privacy tool. When you launch the Tor browser, it effortlessly connects to the Tor network, anonymizing your browsing by sending your traffic through a series of encrypted relays.
Although powerful, Tor is very easy to install, configure and use. The browser comes with a host of built-in privacy tools and blocks invasive scripts and plug-ins itself. The only drawback is performance. Tor is much slower than most consumer browsers and can be a real handicap for many advanced Internet uses where speed can be important.
Unlocking Office documents
Microsoft 365 programs such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint can password-protect and encrypt documents. Microsoft has strengthened this encryption somewhat with each new version, so many of the solutions that exist fail to unlock files from more recent versions of Microsoft 365.
One exception is Elcomsoft Advanced Office Password Recovery, which can decrypt documents from all versions of Microsoft Office. According to the manufacturer, the software can also determine passwords for Wordperfect Office, Openoffice.org and several other Office packages. The tool is available for a flat fee, while its free version is rather limited. It only supports passwords up to three characters long, which inevitably won't be enough.
PDF documents that you have password-protected using Adobe Acrobat or Word are a special case. For these, you'll need a separate program, namely Elcomsoft Advanced PDF Password Recovery, for which a test version with limited functionality is available.
Finally, there's also John the Ripper, an open source program that decrypts passwords from various Office formats and other programs thanks to several extensions. However, this may take several hours, or even days for some complex files: decryption speed will also depend on the computing power of your Windows PC.
Scan your own network
If malware manages to penetrate your computer, it will often try to infect other computers on your network. As a preventive measure, you can subject the devices in your network to a vulnerability scan. The best-known tool is the open-source Nmap software.
It searches for open ports via which the device can be accessed from the outside, and deduces the operating system, its version, running services and installed firewall from the port configuration and other data.
Nmap is a professional tool, however, and requires some knowledge of how networks work. However, its website provides detailed instructions for the program. Once the results have been obtained, further research may be required to interpret the data provided by Nmap, but here too, online resources are available to support you.
