FireMaster is the First ever tool to recover the lost Master Password of Firefox.
Master password is used by
Firefox to protect the stored loign/password information for all visited websites. If the master password is forgotten, then there
is no way to recover the master password and user will lose all the passwords stored in it.
However you can now use FireMaster to recover the forgotten master password and get back all the stored Login/Passwords.
FireMaster
supports Dictionary, Hybrid,Brute-force and advanced
Patternbased Brute-force password
cracking techniques to recover from simple to complex password.
Advanced pattern based password
recovery mechanism reduces cracking time significantly especially when the
password is complex.
FireMaster is successfully tested with all versions of Firefox starting from 1.0 to latest version v13.0.1.
It works on wide range of
platforms starting from Windows XP to Windows 8.
Firefox
Password Manager and Master Password
Firefox comes with
built-in password manager tool which remembers username and passwords
for all the websites you visit. This login/password information is stored in the encrypted
form in Firefox database files residing in user's profile directory.
However any body can just launch the password manager from the Firefox
browser and view the credentials. Also one can just copy these database
files to different machine and view it offline using the tools such as FirePassword.
Hence to protect from
such threats, Firefox uses master password to provide enhanced security. By
default Firefox does not set the master password. However once you have set the
master password, you need to provide it every time to view login credentials. So if you lose
the master password then that means you have lost all the stored passwords as well.
So far there was no way to recover these credentials once you have lost the master password. Now the FireMaster can
help you to recover the master password and get back all the sign-on
information.
Internals of FireMaster
Once you have lost master password, there is no way to
recover it as it is not stored at all.
Whenever user enters the master
password, Firefox uses it to decrypt the encrypted data associated with
the known string. If the decrypted data matches this known string then
the entered password is correct. FireMaster uses
the similar technique to check for the master
password, but in more optimized way.
The entire operation
goes like this.
FireMaster
generates passwords on the fly through various methods.
Then it computes
the hash of the password using known algorithm.
Next this password
hash is used to decrypt the encrypted data for known plain
text (i.e. "password-check").
Now if the
decrypted string matches with the known plain text (i.e.
"password-check") then the generated password is the master
password.
Firefox stores the
details about encrypted string, salt, algorithm and version information
in key database file key3.db in the user's profile directory. You can
just copy this key3.db file to different directory and specify the
corresponding path to FireMaster. You can also copy this key3.db to any
other high end machine for faster recovery operation.
FireMaster supports
following password recovery methods
1) Dictionary
Cracking Method
In this mode,
FireMaster uses dictionary file having each word on separate line to
perform the operation. You can find lot of online dictionary with
different sizes and pass it on to Firemaster. This method is more
quicker and can find out common passwords.
2) Hybrid
Cracking Method
This is advanced
dictionary method, in which each word in the dictionary file is prefixed
or suffixed with generated word from known character list. This can find
out password like pass123, 12test, test34 etc. From the specified
character list (such as 123), all combinations of strings are generated
and appended or prefixed to the dictionary word based on user settings.
3) Brute-force
Cracking Method
In this method, all
possible combinations of words from given character list is generated
and then subjected to cracking process. This may take long time
depending upon the number of characters and position count specified.
4) Pattern based Brute-force Cracking
Method
Pattern based cracking method significantly reduces the password
recovery time especially when password is complex. This method can
be used when you know the exact password length and remember few
characters.
Video Demonstration of FireMaster
Here is the video demonstration of recovering Firefox master
password using FireMaster. In the video tutorial below it shows
how to use Hybrid Crack & Brute-Force Crack method to easily recover the
master password
Installation & Un-installation
FireMaster comes with
Installer to help in local installation & un-installation. This
installer has intuitive wizard which
guides you through series of steps in completion of installation.
At any point of time, you can uninstall the product using the
Uninstaller located at following location (by default)
Here Firefox_Profile_Path
refers to the directory where key3.db file is present. This points to
the Firefox profile directory (Ex: C:\Documents and
Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<prof
name>) on your machine. However you can also copy key3.db file from
any other machine such as Linux system to your
local windows machine and specify that path during recovering operation.
Quiet mode ( -q option
) will disable printing each password while recovery is in progress.
This makes it much faster especially for brute force operation. However during brute force operation if
the password count exceeds 50000 passwords then it automatically enters
the
quiet mode.
Hybrid method tries normal
dictionary password as well as password created by
appending/prefixing the generated strings to the dictionary word.
For example if the dictionary word is "test" and you have specified
character set as '123' (-c 123 -s) then the new passwords will be
test1, test12, test123, test32 etc.
Character list (-g
for hybrid and -c
for brute force) specifies the characters to be used for generating
passwords. If you don't specify then the default character list is used.
For brute force -m indicates the minimum length of password to be
generated.
This can reduce the generated passwords and hence the
time considerably when large number of character set is specified. Similarly
-l (small 'L') specifies the maximum length of password to be
generated. For example, if you specify -m 6 and -l 8 then only
passwords which are of length at least 6 and above but below 8 will
be generated.
Now you can reduce the password cracking time significantly using
pattern based password recovery mechanism. If you know that password
is of certain length and also remember few characters then you can
specify that pattern for brute force cracking. For example, assume
that you have set the master password of length 12 and it begins
with 'fire' and ends with '123' then command will look like below
This will reduce the time to seconds which otherwise would have
taken days or hours to crack that password. You can even crack the
impossible looking passwords using the right pattern.
FireMaster in
Action
FireMaster and FireFox
FireMaster is successfully tested with latest
Firefox version 13.0.1 and it can recover master password successfully from any
Firefox, starting with version 1.0 or more.
If the FireMaster failed to work with your Firefox version then please send me the
key3.db and cert8.db (required
for older versions) files which are present in your Firefox profile
directory. Note that sign-on
credentials are stored in the signons.txt file and key3.db just contains
the master password related information. So even if some one knows your
master password it will be useless unless he/she has access to
signons.txt file.
Disclaimer
FireMaster is designed with good
intention to recover the Lost Master Password so that every one keep
enjoying their experience with Firefox. Like any other tool its use
either good or bad, depends upon the user who uses it. However neither author nor SecurityXploded is
in anyway responsible for damages or impact caused due to misuse of FireMaster.
Thanks to the
Mozilla-Firefox crew for making such an excellent, beautiful, free
browser.
Thanks to everyone who shared their experience with FireMaster through their
valuable feedbacks and suggestions.
Release History
Version 5.6: 26th July 2012
Fixed the problem with checking for empty Master Password during initialization.
Version 5.5: 22nd May 2012
Fixed critical bug in Dictionary & Hybrid Crack with first character missing. Thanks to josebautista for reporting the error.
Version 5.2: 27th Apr 2012
Fixed minor bugs in UI and messages, Works well with latest version of Firefox v11.
Version 5.1: 11th Sep 2011
Tested successfully with latest version of Firefox v6.0.2. Fixed
the issue with silent mode operation.
Version 5.0: 20th July 2011
Automatically discover default Firefox profile path,
Support for showing up larger numbers & total time,
Silent mode with no verbose messages and prompts - good for scripting
& few bug fixes and better of display of intermediate results.
Version 4.5: 15th Nov 2010
Installer for local Installation & Uninstallation of the
software. Few usability interface related changes.
Version 4.0: 8th Jan 2010
Support for Windows 7. Error messages are now shown clearly in RED. Few bug fixes and security changes.
Version 3.5: 22nd Aug 2009
Resolved the compatibility problem with latest Firefox version
3.5. Now FireMaster dynamically detects the Firefox version and
recovers the master password accordingly.
Version 3.1: 28th Sep 2008
Fixed the bug in recovering the master password for Iceweasel which
is browser derived from Firefox.
Version 3.0: 29th July 2008
Support for Firefox version 3.0, now you can recover the master
password of latest version of Firefox. The differences in reading the
Firefox key database file is resolved.
Kudos to the Firefox crew for yet another beautiful version of
Firefox...!
Version 2.5: 22nd March 2008
Pattern based brute force password recovery method is implemented
which reduces the time considerably when certain part of the password is already known. Also minimum length of password can be specified which improves the
recovery time greatly.
Usage is simplified by forcing one crack method at a time and
providing better meaningful options. Fixed the bug
in displaying statistics and now it displays the remaining time
accurately based on the current speed which is computed dynamically.
Thanks for your suggestions and feedbacks...
Version 2.2: 8th
July 2006
FireMaster source
code is released under GPL v2.
Version 2.1: 18th
June 2006
Tested successfully
with latest version 1.5.0.4 of Firefox.
Statistics display
during the operation is improved.
Version 2.0: 25th
Feb 2006
First public release
of FireMaster SOURCE code.
Now it works at
amazing speed of 50k passwords per second on normal m/c.
Firefox library
dependency is removed completely.
For brute force, speed
and time is displayed during operation.
Lots of optimizations
and few bug fixes.
Thanks to 'T Barton'
for reporting the bug with 1.5 version.
Version 1.5: 14th
Jan 2006
Bug in parsing key3.db
fixed.
Displaying results
during recovery operation.
Speed is doubled
compared to the original version.
