Cracking my password in HyperCard for System 6?

Question

Cracking my password in HyperCard for System 6?

I think it was on System 6 that I made an animation using HyperCard when I was a kid. But I saved it with a password. It's a long shot—and definitely not a priority in my life lol—but is there a way to crack this thing so I can watch the little animation again? I figure a password-protected app in those days can't be that complex, but then again... it's also older software.

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.5.8), 2.4 GHz 2GB

Posted on Mar 9, 2011 11:50 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 11, 2011 11:56 PM in response to keraunoscopia

keraunoscopia,

Was it a hypercard password or a system password? If it was a system password, try booting from an external hard drive that is not password protected. That will let you see the files on the internal drive.

Jim

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Answer 2

Apr 9, 2011 1:53 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man

It was a HyperCard password, specific to the actual file. I could use HyperCard for any other file, but that one wouldn't open without a password. Incredibly, I remember the old password, but I'm pretty sure I changed it.

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Answer 3

Apr 10, 2011 5:58 AM in response to keraunoscopia

I seem to remember some sort of HyperCard Stack Unprotect XCMD (another stack), shareware or freeware, legal or not, from the time. Never had a need of it and all my stuff is in transit so I can't search for it in my stash. Try Google (with "HyperCard Stack Unprotect XCMD"). No promises of success, and please be clever enough to try on a COPY of your stack - you most certainly are clever enough, but there invariably is someone who won't bother and hoses their only copy of the important stack.

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Answer 4

Apr 12, 2011 4:45 AM in response to Simon Teale

Excellent advice, thank you! It will be a while before I can see if this works (weeks or maybe longer). We'll see!

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Answer 5

mpontes

Level 1

4 points

Apr 16, 2011 9:11 PM in response to keraunoscopia

Oddly enough, I was in the exact same situation as you a few weeks ago. Stack password protected as a kid, didn't remember the password.

I did try two HyperCard stacks that claim to unlock password protected stacks: Unprotect XCMD and Deprotect. Neither worked. My stack was an HyperCard 1.0 stack with read protection (meaning it asks for a password right when you open the stack, won't open without the correct pass). I believe these two stacks only deal with other kinds of password protections that let you open the stack but not view/edit scripts, for example.

All a read protection does is scramble the header of the HyperCard stack a little bit. With some help of files I found on the Internet, I figured out how to rewrite the header of a stack well enough so I could open the stack again. I I did have to reverse the checksum that shows up in HyperCard 1 stacks, myself though, it wasn't described.

I wrote a little program to help me rewrite the checksum field, but I edited the other fields on my stack manually (since I wasn't planning to open any other stack). I can write a program to do that automatically, though. Can you tell me if the format of your stack is HyperCard 1 or 2?

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Answer 6

Mar 18, 2016 2:02 AM in response to mpontes

I know this is a long shot, but I'm in a similiar situation. I have some HyperCard Stacks that my friend and I made in 1994 when we were in the 8th grade. I recently got the disks back and after several hours of multiple versions of OSX, finally got them copied on my hard drive.

Long story short, they're password protected. I have no idea what password we used when we were 8th grade. LOL.

I've been trying to figure out a way to decode the stacks, but haven't been successful yet. They are HyperCard 2.0 Stacks.

Is there any way you could help me learn how to rewrite the header of the stacks like you did? I don't know how to reverse the checksum.

Thanks!

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