Articles,Third Party Applications July 8, 2013 at 7:00 am

Clear text access to ARD’s passwords database!

ARD-Inspector is open source donationware which was made for OS X system administrators and consultants who need to recover a computer password from Apple Remote Desktop.

ARD-Inspector

To make this tool, it required me to do some reverse engineering of Apple Remote Desktop.  It uses the ARD Master Password to access to the AES encrypted database stored in the ARD users preferences. As you can see from looking directly at the source code, this tool does not make any modifications to the ARD file.  Everything is read-only and no network connections are made. Your ARD secrets will stay safe, but now you can access it if you need to.

All documentation and download links can be found on the GitHub page for ARD Inspector.

Yoann Gini

French freelancer, working as IT Consultant for SMB on Apple product integration (OS X Server, Xsan, OS X and iOS) and network infrastructure (secure mobile access, cross campus communication, on-site security…). Apple Certified Trainer and Apple Authorized Tech Series Presenters I'm also a Certified Ethical Hacker and in the end, software developer. I've published some softwares for OS X system administrator like VPN Admin Tool, Radius Admin Tool and ARD-Inspector.

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7 Comments

  • Why were the keys included in the repo? Especially the private one…

  • To be honest, it’s because Sparkle key management is just a mess. I want something simple to spread if people want to improve and share.

    If I got a lot of request on that on github I can change the keys, but I think it’s bad because that link the software evolution to the key’s owner, me.

  • Works like a charm – and I don’t mean the Windoze 8 kind 😉

  • precompiled software want access to my proxy auth items, why?

    Why this software look for a connection?

  • The tool has evolved since the article and now it ask for network connection for software update.

    If you don’t care about update, you can deny the network access and check for updates by yourself.

  • Dude change the sw description…”Everything is read-only and no network connections are made”

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