Fooling Foolproof Security
By Nightmare

Foolproof security is a program that runs on a windows 9x box.  The purpose of foolproof I guess is to keep people that don't know really know what they are doing from messing with stuff.  It can be quite a annoying program if you are trying to do anything with a foolproofed computer.  I will be listing ways to get around it on a windows box.  If you have more ways than what I have here: send them to my hotmail account at nightmare08@hotmail.com don't forget to send your handle and email with the info so I can give you credit.

First, see what kind of rights your have.  You might just need to edit it out of the autoexec.bat file.  Ok, you can't do anything.  Restart the computer in safe mode.  If you don't know how to do this you really should not be reading this.  For those of you that don't know how, two ways- hit F8 while windows is loading and choose the safe mode option-- or when windows is loading hit ctrl+alt+del and it should start up in safe mode.  I'm sure there are other ways but that should be all you need.  Now,  from safe mode you can do a good amount of stuff.  You can edit the autoexec.bat file now or (my favorite) take the folder that foolproof is installed in, should be C:\fp95, and move it into a different folder- just cut and paste,  easy!  Now restart the computer, it will display that it could not find a certain .vxd (I think it is a .vxd, if not just hit a key and leave me alone), it will tell you to hit a key to continue, hit the key!(not too difficult).  Windows will load just fine, except will no foolproof.

You can also try key commands like ctrl+F12, or something of that sort.  If this works it will unlock foolproof for about a minute.  Not really enough time to do a lot, but you should be able to do some basic stuff.  You can try ctrl+alt+del, but I have never got this to really work.  I would give it a try anyway, especially if you are working from a DOS prompt.  Go simple and try shoulder surfing for the password.  If the password is all you want try a keylogger, its worth a shot.

Foolproof also stores the administrator password in plaintext in the Windows Swap file.  All you have to do is boot up into safe mode (as mentioned above), copy the swap file to a temporary filename, reboot into windows and use a hex editor to search the swapfile for the string, "FOOLPROO" and right after will be the actual password.

If you can execute 'echo' with 4 command line arguments  you can disable (esentially delete) foolproof. echo Hi > c:\fool95\fooltsr.exe Do this with every file in the foolproof dir.

Quick summary:
1) Boot up in Safe Mode bypasses foolproof making it possible for the user to delete or move the foolproof's directory.
2) Holding the <SHIFT> key under Macintosh prevents foolproof's module from loading.(Yes even on Mac.)
3) Creating a copy of 'command.com' with the name of 'temp.txt' (for example), then opening it up with wordpad, and saving it as 'c:\windows\help\wordpad.hlp' (make sure you don't convert the file), then simply click on the HELP feature under the START menu, and you will be dropped into dos.
4) Use the 'echo' command to overwrite foolproof's files (i.e. execute the following command 'echo Hi > c:\fool95\fooltsr.exe', 'fool95' stands for the directory foolproof is installed in).
5) Grab the administrator password by locating it in the swap file crated by Windows 95. You can accomplish this by simply finding the string 'FOOLPROO', and the string after that will be the administrator password.