Cain & Abel is a program that has been around for a long time among users. However, given its purpose, it is normal for security programs to detect it as suspicious or dangerous software. Avast, for example, recognizes this software as a potentially dangerous program called “Win32:Cain-B”, just as Windows Defender identifies it as “Win32/Cain!4_9:14” and classifies it as software with potentially dangerous behavior.
But this is because, being a tool used by hackers, it is considered dangerous by security programs. However, its developer has claimed on more than one occasion that it does not contain malware or hide backdoors. Unfortunately, we cannot claim that this software is 100% secure, as its source code has not been published or made available to auditing companies that would allow us to know that it really is secure. Therefore, it is like any other proprietary software, a very useful program that works, but with which we must be very careful.
As you can imagine after everything that we have told you in these lines, Cain & Abel is not a program to use like Word or Excel. Here we are faced with a powerful software solution that presents us with many functions and its own behavior. In addition, it is not easy to use and configure, so it is more aimed at expert users than Windows novices used to do, for example. In addition, it is recommended to make a lawful use of the application in order to avoid problems with the law.
How to hack passwords with Cain & Abel
Although Cain and Abel have always been considered as one program, it is actually made up of two parts. The first of these is Cain, the application responsible for cracking passwords. And the second is Abel, the Windows NT service that protects the sending of passwords within local networks.
This software occupies only 10 MB and, unless we have problems with the antivirus, as we have just explained, at first its installation and start-up has no mystery. Also, it does not hide unwanted software or advertisements.
Once the program is installed on the computer we can start using it. To do this, we will start Cain and what we will see will be a very simple interface, like the following one, where we will have all our tools.
The program’s interface is divided into tabs, within each of which we will find the different modules for hacking passwords: Decoders, Network, Sniffer, Cracker, Traceroute, CCDU, Wireless and Query.
Within each tab we can find everything necessary both to search for passwords and to decrypt them. Some of the available techniques are very simple, and any user will be able to carry them out, but others are much more complicated and, if we are not advanced users, we will have problems.
Depending on the type of password that we are trying to break, it can take more or less time.
Download the latest version of Cain and Abel
The developer of this tool is an Italian programmer named “Massimiliano Montoro“. Although the program was proprietary, it distributed it through its website completely free of charge for any user who wanted to download it. However, its main website has been down for some time, so to download it, we recommend using other reliable websites.
In this link we will find the latest official version of Cain & Abel, 4.9.56 published in 2014. Since then, the program has been discontinued. We must be careful when downloading this program, since many pages hide malware in this program. We must always look for alternative download websites like the one we have linked to, and avoid falling into deception.
Alternatives to Cain & Abel
It is true that Cain and Abel is one of the best known tools in this area. But, of course, it is not the only one. We can find a wide variety of alternatives to hack passwords like the ones we are going to see below.
John the Ripper
This is another favorite tool to recover (or hack) passwords. John the Ripper is free and open source software, available for all types of operating systems that will allow us to capture and decrypt all types of passwords and hashes on any operating system. A more complete software than Cain and Abel, with support and, furthermore, 100% reliable as the source code is available to everyone.
hashcat
This tool is specialized in reversing password hashes to obtain the key they hide. This software is compatible with more than 200 different protocols, being able to obtain, through all kinds of techniques, any type of password that we want to guess. Hashcat is often used to complement other similar password crackers.
Wireshark
Wireshark is not a password cracking program as such. Rather, it is a network sniffer (one of the functions that Cain and Abel has) that allows, among many other things, to locate all kinds of passwords and other information that can travel through the network. This software will only allow us to capture the hashes of the passwords that we send through our local network, but then we will have to resort to other specialized software, like any of the two above, to reverse the password.
We can download it from this link.
Ettercap
Ettercap is a program similar to Wireshark, that is, a tool designed to function as an interceptor/sniffer/logger for LAN networks of all kinds. This tool is compatible with SSH1 and HTTPS, as well as being able to inject characters into packets in real time and carry out «Man in the Middle» attacks against PPTP tunnels. A must-have tool for anyone interested in performing security audits
