Cain&Abel is a long standing password recovery tool that can sniff passwords from the network you are in, crack encrypted passwords using dictionary, brute force and cryptanalysis attacks, record VoIP conversations creating an MP3 audio file, reveal password boxes, analyse encrypted SSH and HTTPS connections and much more. The target public are security researchers, network administrators and IT teachers but it can also be exploited by the bad guys of course, the developer will not help in illegal activities.
I downloaded this program from the official site and AVG antivirus gave me a warning that the software contained a trojan horse, due to how password crackers work it is possible your antivirus will trigger a security warning too, it is up to you to decide what to do, I also got a popup warning from Cain&Abel saying that I had Windows firewall enabled and this would stop some features, implying that I should disable it for everything to work. You will be asked to optionally install WinPCap a packet capture library, without it Cain&Abel wireless packet sniffing won’t work.
Cain&Abel password cracker
How to record a VoIP call with Cain&Abel
To record a VoIP call with Cain&Abel go to “Configure“, click the “Sniffer” tab, select the network interface card from the list and save the settings, now go to the “Sniffer” tab in the main window choose “VoIP” and “Start Sniffing“, from now on any voice over IP call that goes through the network will be encrypted and saved as MP3, you will have to wait until enough traffic has been generated before being able to listen to the audio file.
The configuration window can also be used to create self-signed fake digital certificates, retrieve a digital certificate using a proxy with the “Certificates Collector” or launch an ARP (Arp Poison Routing) attack with a real or spoofed IP and MAC address. This free password cracker is one of the most complete available in the market and an excellent tool to learn about computer security, everything is easily classified in tabs “Decoders“, “Network“, “Sniffer“, “Cracker“, “Traceroute“, “CCDU“, “Wireless” and “Query“, each one of those tabs contains related extra options.
To use Cain&Abel you should have some computer security background, this is not a tool for the complete beginner, the most basic tool Cain&Abel includes is a Base64 password decoder going up to a WPA PSK (Pre-Shared Key) calculator and an RSA SecurID Token calculator, this is an excellent tool to find out about passwords, it contains a password decoder, cracker and dumper as well as hash calculators with support for Wifi for network monitoring.