To break that stringent password in the PC, people are now more familiar with password audit tools like John the Ripper, Cain and Abel, Aircrack-ng, and THC Hydra. After more than three years of silent exile, the legendary auditing tool, L0phtCrack is back to take on the loose passwords, refreshing the users’ memory of its past popularity. “L0phtCrack is probably the number one reason why people disabled LANMan hashes and actually picked passwords longer than 14 characters in corporations,” says HD Moore, Founder of an open source penetration testing framework.

The password auditing tool disappeared from the market after @stake, a company which was formed by L0pht Heavy Industries, was taken over by Symantec in 2004. This year the original L0phtCrack team, consisting of Christien Rioux, Chris Wysopal and Peiter Zatkhat, has bought back the software rights from Symantec.

L0phtCrack users remained attached using the outdated downloadable links through Torrents and Rapidshare, despite its exit from the market. However, as new trends emerged in passwords, the users’ loyalty shifted. Fulfilling the craving the latest version, L0phtCrack 6, released this year supports x64 processors and the latest operating systems released from the likes of Microsoft and Ubuntu. It can also crack passwords that use the NTLM hash, an algorithm for protecting Windows passphrases that has come into vogue during its sabbatical.

The launch of the tool in 1997 was criticized to be handier for the cyber criminals than ethical businesses; however, it turned out to be more popular among legitimate businesses and government agencies. Any product has its cons, for L0phtCrack it is its lack of availability in countries like India, which has become the best bet for cyber crooks. Moreover, banishing its chances of success is the $295 price tag, which makes the free tools like John the Ripper and Cain and Abel more desirable. So, it’s time for its founders to ponder on making it available without any regional restrictions and opening it up for free access.