Saturday 28 December 2013

How to become the system user in windows and take the SAM file

Windows generally have three types if users wiz. user, administrator, system user. We users only have access to first two users and system user is like the root user in linux. Microsoft does not give us option to function as system user, that means we are not the sole owner of the windows, as we cannot use it as root.

So, here is the way to become the system user of our windows and do whatever we want. In my previous blogs I have mentioned that windows passwords are stored in SAM file in c:\windows\system32\config and we cannot view it or copy or delete it. But once we become the system user we can manipulate this file also. Now you may got the essence of system user.

Here are the steps to become the system user and take home the SAM file.

1. Download psexec.exe from sysinternal

2. Place it your C drive(or drive in which your windows is installed)

3. Open the cmd.exe and type cd \ . It will place you in the root directory where psexec is placed.

4. Use the following command   psexec -i -s cmd.exe
where -i for interactive
          -s for system account

5. When the command completes cmd shell will launched then type whoami, it will say "system"

6. Now, open the task manager and kill the explorer.exe

7. From thr cmd shell that is currently opened type start explorer.exe

8. When the explorer is launched, notice the name "system" as the user. Now you can delete or copy files in the windows\system32 folder which were not possible when your either admin or normal user.

9. Now you can also copy SAM file and extract hashes from it.

Monday 9 December 2013

How to remove proxy from the linux terminal

As linux has become one of the major platforms in the computer systems. But it is still far from being perfect like windows or mac. It works, but sometimes it just don't. But it is still the best when it comes to Character User Interface(CUI). Sure, Windows and Mac also provide terminal, but they are simply not as developed as of ubuntu or any linux.

Since its launch it has come a long way down the road. But still today, it not the perfect or simplest platform to work, its graphical interface still face lot of problems. One if its problem is changing the proxy.

When proxy is changed from the network settings , from the settings applications, sometimes it doesn't apply to linux terminal or even the browser. No matter how many times system proxy is changed or restarted it just doesn't work. Method to change the proxy through is simple and it always works, all you have to do is follow following steps.

1.  Firstly you have to gain the root access of the system. You can achieve that by su command or sudo su, and then entering your user password if you have never done it before.

2. #cd /etc/apt

3. There will be a file located named "apt.conf"

4. Open the file by #nano apt.conf

5. In this you file all your proxy for various http, https, ftp connections proxy would be mentioned.

6. Change the proxy, to your desired configuration.

7. Save the file and now your new settings will be implimented to the entire system.

Hope it helped, if still any problem occurs, feel free to contact me.