15-Minute Reviews :: Asterisks Password Viewer v1.10.02

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Asterisks Password Viewer version 1.10.02 by Keylack Software – An application to aid your recovery of passwords stored on your system.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Windows allows storing your frequently used passwords, such as the passwords in Outlook Express email or for a FTP connection. But since you no longer enter the saved password manually, you tend to forget them. The password is staring right at you, but is hiding behind a row of asterisks – **. This feature is intended to protect your passwords; but sometimes this feature becomes more of a pain, rather than help.

Asterisks Password Viewer is a software that lets you see the actual password behind the asterisks! It can recover passwords to such programs like Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express, The BAT! and other e-mail clients, FTP clients like CuteFTP, FlashFXP etc.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is very simple
• Does appear to work in some cases

Quick Cons

• Didn’t work in a variety of programs
• Crashed on first launch
• Help file is lacking
• Discussion of KRyLack in helpfile

Expansion

Since my test system doesn’t have a lot in the way of passwords on it (None, to be truthful), I decided to brave this software on my main system and test it today. I tend to be a little cautious with any tool designed to thwart some sort of security for your benefit, that it is not being malicious in itself, so I tested using dummy information. I did not specifically detect network traffic, though again a word of caution on any application like this for the potential of being malicious.

Overall, after my first crash the interface is dead simple. It is just one window (two if you concider the registration window). It provides information on how to use quickly at the top, next to an About… button and Help button. Below that is a box that will display the most recent password recovered as well as the buttons ‘Save to file…’ and ‘Copy to Clipboard’ (Very self-explanatory). Below that are four options; Stay on top, Show unmasked password in the original field, Always show icon in the System Tray and Enable Auto Update (The last option is grayed out, I’m assuming due to the nature of the software from Giveaway of the Day). Finally, the last button is Work in the background, which minimizes the application to the System Tray. (If you have that enabled).

Using the application is very easy. To reveal a password field, you are supposed to be able to mouse over a password field, hold down the Control key and click. Depending on the options you’ve chosen, the password will display where you just clicked as well as in the password field in the application. It is just that simple.

While the application did work on a few of applications I tested including Trillian, Sticky Password (With a bit of effort), as well as a few other applications which don’t save passwords typically. I mention that Sticky Password took a bit of effort because I had Asterisks Password Viewer hidden to the system tray and relying on the form substitution. When I would open my test password database and try it there, I’d get odd characters. I did realize quickly it was Wing Dings however, and opened Asterisks Password Viewer to see the password (Or you could cut and paste into a text-only field to see it). I did however have mixed results; It would not recover passwords from Firefox or Internet Explorer 7; Sony’s Launchpad actually gives false information back as well; Thunderbird just garbled things up.

As mentioned above, the application did crash the first time I ran it. When I launched, I went to register the application, and when registration was complete, the entire application just crashed and required me to start over, including registration. A bit of an inconvenience this was.

The help file did lead me towards a level of concern however. First off, on the ‘Recovering the Password’ page, there is a big broken image there, showing the common red x. This wasn’t my biggest concern however. Outside the Introduction and Official Web Site page, the application stops being titled as Asterisks Password Viewer and instead is titled as KRyLack Password Decryptor. Doing a bit of research (Not much – Was first Google link) I found KRyLack’s website (here): – From the screenshots, it is clearly the same application. As you look around the website and compare it to Keylack’s website it appears to be the same individual/group – A lot of the site is near identical, though you can’t be totally certain. What concerns me with this is that if by some chance KRyLack sells their title for rebranding and resale, what is to prevent someone else not using it for malicious purposes?

Final Verdict

While the application does appear to work in some cases, clearly it hasn’t been hammered out to be used in all places to be a little more universal. I am concerned about this application being a clone of KRyLack’s application as well, but does not seem to be malicious. The usefulness for the individual who lost the password may be limited due to most everything that saves passwords tends to have some sort of password recovery, it seems the usefulness of this tool may lean more towards being an amateur malicious tool. For free, if you have the genuine need to find your own password, it may be worth a go with it. As for paying $14.95 for this title, it’s inability to pull passwords from a multitude of areas makes me want to steer myself and others away from this tool, and even moreso as due to the chance of being a malicious tool.

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, October 15, 2007