Kon-Boot

Kon-Boot password tool

Kon-Boot is an awesome tool that I’ve used extensively with tech jobs that I’ve had in the past (it’s been around since 2009), for clients that couldn’t remember their password :/ or a employee that was fired etc… Most recently Red-Team pentest engagements when I’ve had physical access to a box and needed quick and stealth access. It allows accessing a target computer (Windows/Mac OSX) without knowing the user’s password.

Kon-Boot does not need to remove or modify the user’s password and all changes are reverted back to previous state after system restart unlike other tools that just remove/modify the password and is currently the only solution that I know of that can bypass Windows 10 online passwords.

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ESXI 6.7 Password recovery / reset

Recently I had done some training where we setup ESXI 6.7 on a Intel NUC. It’s been over a month since I’ve touched it. Apparently during the training my coworker had set a root password for the install, which was supposedly written down, but was either typed wrong in the notes or fat-fingered while setting it. Unfortunately, you can no longer boot into single user mode or Service Console to reset the password and VMware suggest you reinstall ESXI to reset the password. I didn’t want to risk trying that method because I wasnt sure if it would affect the currently installed VMs and I didn’t have a copy of ESXI with me to do so. Instead I used a bootable Kali USB to mount the ESXI drive and reset the root password to a blank password by editing the shadow file.

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