How to Crack, Open or Access Outlook PST File without Password

Present State of Password System in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express are still the most used desktop clients all over the world. Just because they are the default applications shipped alongwith the Windows operating system, people use them without bothering to think if any better solution is available or not.

But have you ever wondered about the security aspects of the email communications you have made with your Outlook. If you are working in an environment, where you might have to leave you computer unattended, any other person might come and see your emails in your absence.

Currently there is no way to password protect Outlook on startup or to lock Outlook if you need to quickly walk away from your computer other than by using your Microsoft Windows® logon password or by using third-party software written specifically to password protect Outlook. However, you can set a password on your Personal Folders file (.pst).

If you use an Internet e-mail account in Outlook, such as a POP3 or HTTP account, your e-mail messages are delivered to a .pst data file on your computer’s local hard disk. You can use a password on your .pst file to help prevent accidental intrusion by other people whom you share your computer with.

But the Password System of Outlook is very weak

It is an established fact that the password system of Outlook to safeguard the pst files is very weak. Without re-inventing the wheel, I will quote the details given on nirsoft website…

The password is not really saved in the pst file. Instead of saving the real password, Outlook creates a 32-bit hash value that represents the original password. The algorithm that is used to generate this number is just a CRC32 algorithm with a little modification. CRC32 is mostly used to verify data integrity, but from unknown reason, Microsoft decided to use it for password protection instead of using a strong hashing algorithm, like MD5 or SHA-1.

The bad thing about using a CRC32 algorithm for saving a password is the fact that for each 32-bit number, there are a lots matching passwords, which mean that if you set a password on your pst file, you can also open it with many other passwords that match the same CRC value.

For example, if you set the password ‘1234′ to your pst file, you can also open it with the following passwords: ‘yZdHpA’, ‘hkNkwC’, ‘YUWqKD’, ‘FkbbpH’, ‘WZHAwJ’, and much more…
Don’t believe it ? Just try it, and you’ll find out that it’s true !

How to Access Outlook PST Files without Password

So, in case you have forgotten your PST file password, then this small utility PstPassword from NirSoft can help you out. PstPassword is a small utility that recover lost password of Outlook .PST (Personal Folders) file.

This utility can recover the PST passwords of Outlook 97, Outlook 2000, Outlook XP, Outlook 2003, and Outlook 2007. You don’t have to install MS-Outlook in order to use this utility. You only need the original PST file that you locked with a password.

PstPassword doesn’t require any installation process or additional dll files. In order to start using it, just run the executable file, PstPassword.exe

After you run PstPassword, the main window displays the list of all PST files of the current logged on user (Under Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook). For each password-protected PST file, PstPassword provide 3 alternative passwords that will open the PST file. If the PST is not protected by a password, the 3 password columns remain empty, and the CRC value column is 0×00000000.
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Tip: If you are like me who want to have your cake and eat it too, then RoboForm is an ideal solution for you. RoboForm is world’s largest used Password manager, which allows you to totally forget about botheration of remembering passwords and also handles their security very well.

[Download NirSoft PstPassword]