What Is Null Password Bug In Microsoft Outlook?

By Author: Mohit Mathur
Total Articles: 105
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If you are working on Microsoft Outlook with IMAP or POP3 accounts, all your sent and received emails are stored in PST (Personal Folders) file. Microsoft Outlook enables you to set a password to Microsoft Outlook PST file, to safeguard your emails, notes, contacts, and other Outlook items, from unauthorized access. However, in some situations, you may forget or lose your Outlook PST file password. In such situations, you cannot access data from the PST file. At this point, you need to use PST Password Recovery utilities.

Several Microsoft Outlook users are not aware of the fact that PST Password protection is not very strong. If you lost your PST file password, you can recover it very easily.

How does Outlook save your password in PST file?

Actually the Outlook password in not saved in PST file. In place of storing the actual password, Microsoft Outlook creates a hash value of 32-bit, which represents original password. This number is generated using CRC32 algorithm with minor modifications.

The CRC32 algorithm is generally used for verifying the data integrity. However, Microsoft use it for password ...
... protection in place of using some strong hashing techniques. The only bad thing with such password protection is the reality that for every 32-bit string, there are a number of matching passwords.

What is null password bug in Microsoft Outlook?

Microsoft Outlook uses 32-bit value to determine whether to prompt user to enter a password. If the value is not zero, you must enter a password, which matches same CRC value for opening the PST file. If value is zero, you are allowed to open your PST file without entering a password.

However, the problem occurs when you set a PST Password that matches zero CRC value. This is a very critical bug. In such cases, you need not to enter any password for accessing data from PST file.

In case you Lost PST Password of Microsoft Outlook PST file, PST Password Recovery Tool becomes a need of hour. You can easily Recover PST Password using these advanced and powerful third-party applications.

Such tools are powerful enough to methodically scan entire PST file and create a series of passwords, which are similar to the original password. The PST Password Recovery software are totally safe and easy to use with read-only conduct and interactive user interface.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook Password Recovery is the most advanced utility to successfully recovery lost password of MS Outlook PST file. The software is designed for Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000.

Mohit Mathur has passion for writing Technical articles. He is right now writing articles related to products like PST Password Recovery & DBX Repair and has now become a professional writer.
For more information please visit:- http://www.pst-password-recovery.com/