How to recover your MSN and Windows messenger passwords

MSN Password - Forgot your MSN password? - How to recover MSN password - Download MSN password finder - Change MSN password

MSN Messenger Password Recovery tool allows you to easily find all passwords from MSN Messenger and Windows messenger. The program finds MSN and Hotmail passwords from all versions of messengers!

Download the MSN Password Recovery tool.

How to use MSN password finder Here's how to find and recover all messenger passwords:

Run the MSN Password Recovery tool installation. Click Next. Then click I Agree (please read the license agreement before clicking this button). And finally, click Install.

The MSN Password Recovery tool will be installed. On the next screen, click Finish. The Recovery tool will load automatically if the "Run MSN Messenger Password Recovery" checkbox has been checked before you clicked on Finish. If the password finder does not run, go to Start menu, Programs, MSN Password Recovery and click on MSN Messenger Password Recovery icon. Alternatively, you can do it from the desktop shortcut that was created during the installation.

In the MSN Messenger Password Recovery tool click "Recover Password!" to find all passwords. It's easy!

Once you have recovered your MSN password, we would highly recommend if you changed your MSN password to something that you can remember well. See how to change your MSN password.

If you are a programmer, you can design your own tool to recover and find MSN password. There are different decryption algorithms for different Windows and MSN messenger versions.

For early versions of MSN Messengers up to and including 5.0:

The passwords were not even hidden, stored in the registry as "encrypted" strings using Base64 encoding algorithm. You can't even call it an encryption!
If you're making the password finder tool for an early version of the Messenger, the Base64 encoded password was stored in the key called "Password.NET Messenger Service" (path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger).
Just extract it and use any freely available base64 decoders to find the password.
The teams that produced working decryption tools for these versions were USSrback and xCAT.

MSN Messenger 6.0 - 7.0:

Microsoft started to use the internal encryption function CryptUnprotectData to store the saved passwords for MSN Messenger. The first person to make a password decoder for MSN Messenger in August 2004 was t0mbkeeper (who posted the sources to SecurityFocus). The tool used Microsoft Crypt32.dll library to decode the passwords, but only worked for Windows 2000.

Since the tool didn't work for Windows XP, or for version 7.0 of the newly released MSN Messenger, in August 2005 new tool has been released simultaneously by Napalm and Gregory Panakkal. The changes in the password storage mechanism for MSN Messenger 7.0 in Win XP and 2003 included adding the entropy value, which is based on credui.dll GUID.

MSN Messenger 7.5:

Version 7.5 of the MSN Messenger saw the password algorithm changed again. Tools from Napalm and Gregory Panakkal didn't work anymore, since now Credentials manager is used (Windows password manager) along with a dynamic salt value and entropy. Credentials manager data is stored in the following registry path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\IdentityCRL\
If you don't know how to program this algorithm, here's the program:

The tool that decodes MSN Messenger 7.5 passwords.

Windows Live Messenger 8:

Latest variation of the MSN Messenger - Windows Live Messenger, when installed, looks for messenger profiles already set-up from previous versions and imports the user account data. The storage methods and location are similar to MSN Messenger 7.5. The only difference is that extra data is appended at the end of the password.

The tool that decodes Windows Live Messenger passwords.

Windows Messenger:

The passwords are stored using the same way as the other passwords in MSN Messenger 7.0. No need to invent a decoder, source from Napalm could be used with minor adjustments to decode Windows Messenger passwords.
You can download the Windows Messenger Password Decoder here if you don't know how to program this.