More Mac Password Hacking (Snow Leopard)
About 4 years ago I wrote a post on Mac password hacking in OS X. The versions of OS X I wrote about was current at that time but, obviously, there have been a few updates since then. Here’s a method I recently read about that works on the Snow Leopard version of OS X:
- Startup the computer while hold down “Command-S” until you hear the startup sound. This boots the computer into single user mode. As with the previous steps I outlined you’ll see text scrolling through the window before you get a command prompt.
- If you don’t know the user names on the machine you can type the following to pull up a list of user folders that most often correspond to all the users on that machine:
ls /Users - At the command prompt type:
/sbin/fsck -fy [Enter]
/sbin/mount -uw / [Enter]
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist [Enter]
dscl . -passwd /Users/[username] [password] [Enter](Replace [username] with the username you want to change and [password] with new password you’d like to use for this user account. In both cases leave out the brackets I’ve used to enclose the placeholders.)
- After entering the new password, type:
reboot [Enter] - At the login window, enter the username with the new password.
Tada!
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