Passware Kit Business and Passware Kit Forensic utilize Microsoft Azure Cloud platform – a highly scalable cloud computing platform for accelerated password recovery.
The following instructions will guide you through setting up and connecting the Passware Cloud Agent to Microsoft Azure.
You will have to follow these instructions for the first set-up of your Azure instance. After you have set it up, you will not have to repeat these instructions to launch the instance in the future.
Choose the instructions below, depending on your operating system:
● Instructions for Windows-based Azure VMs
● Launching an Azure Instance
● Setting up the Passware Cloud Agent on the Azure Instance
● Using GPU acceleration in Microsoft Azure
● Running Passware Kit Forensic
● Instructions for Linux-based Azure VMs
● Launching an Azure Instance
● Setting up the Passware Cloud Agent on the Azure Instance
● Using GPU acceleration in Microsoft Azure
● Running Passware Kit Forensic
Windows-Based Azure VMs
Launching an Azure Instance
1. Create a Microsoft Azure account at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
2. Sign in to your Microsoft account at: https://portal.azure.com/. The following start screen appears:
3. Select “Virtual machines” and click create:
Select an already existing “Subscription” and “Resource group” or add new ones:
Specify the “Virtual machine name” and select the closest or preferable region, then select the Windows-based “image“ for the VM:
Click the “Size” drop-down menu, then click the “See all sizes” link at the bottom of the list:
Choose the VM size with added GPU filter and click “Select”:
Now enter the new Administrator account credentials:
Select RDP in the “Select inbound ports” menu:
Confirm the Windows license and click “Next: Disks >”:
Select the preferred storage settings. Passware Kit Agent performance is not affected by the storage type, so the “Standard SSD” or “Standard HDD” options can be used. No additional data storage is required. Click “Next” to setup the network:
Once you are finished with the Disks, click “Next: Networking >”.
In the “NIC Network security group” section, select “Advanced” and create a new security group with a preferred name:
Click “Review + create”, and once you are happy with the settings, click “Create”:
Wait for the deployment process to complete. The setup of a Windows-based virtual machine is finished.
Now choose the “All resources” option from the top left menu:
Double-click on “Network security group”:
From the left menu, choose “Open inbound security rules”:
Add a new inbound rule to allow connections to port 10776 (before 2024v1 - 10555) via UDP protocol:
Click “Add”.
The Azure instance is now configured and running!
Setting up the Passware Cloud Agent on the Azure Instance
Go back to “All resources” and select the “Public IP address” resource:
Copy the IP address from the “Overview” section:
Open the RDP client and paste the IP address into the “Computer” field:
Connect to the virtual machine via RDP:
Enter the credentials used during the virtual machine setup process. Allow the connection if prompted by Windows.
In Windows System Properties, on the “Advanced” tab, click the “Environment Variables” button.
Click “New…”, add PASSWARE_AGENT_CONNECTION_PASSWORD as a “Variable name, and set the connection password as a “Variable value”:
Download and install Passware Kit Agent for Windows. Copy it to the RDP-connected Azure machine and double-click it to initiate the installation process:
Launch the Agent once installation is finished.
Using GPU acceleration in Microsoft Azure
For password recovery with hardware acceleration, you need to install the GPU drivers. Please follow the official Microsoft guide to do that:
Install NVIDIA GPU drivers on N-series VMs running Windows
NVIDIA driver installation file
Install AMD GPU drivers on N-series VMs running Windows
Running Passware Kit Forensic
Launch Passware Kit Forensic on your main machine. Go to Tools | Options | Hardware, and click “+ Cloud Unit” at the bottom of the page:
Enter your Azure Virtual machine IP address in the “Public IP Address” field and the password that you have specified in the environment variable setup in the “Authentication key” field:
Click “Add Unit” and make sure the unit is displayed in the “Network and Cloud Units” section:
The Passware Kit Agent on Microsoft Azure is now connected, and you can use it for distributed password recovery!
Linux-Based Azure VMs
Launching an Azure Instance
1. Create a Microsoft Azure account at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
2. Sign in to your Microsoft account at: https://portal.azure.com/ . The following start screen
appears:
3. Select “Virtual machines” and click create:
Select an already existing “Subscription” and “Resource group” or add new ones:
Enter “Virtual machine name” and select the closest or preferable region, then select Linux-based “image“ for the VM:
Click the “Size” drop-down menu, then click “See all sizes” link at the bottom of the list:
Choose a VM size with added GPU filter and click “Select”:
Download and install the PuTTY utility: https://www.putty.org/.
Launch PuTTYgen, click Generate, and follow the onscreen instructions:
Enter the passphrase for your private key:
Save your private and public keys in “Notepad” or any text editor and close the PuTTYgen.
Now launch PuTTY:
Open the SSH >Auth menu. Then click “Browse” and select your private key:
Copy the public key from the text editor and paste it into the “SSH public key” field in Azure VM setup. Don’t forget to enter a username in the corresponding field.
In the “Inbound port rules” section, choose “Allow selected ports” and select “SSH (22)” from the pull-down list.
Click “Next: Disks>”.
Select the preferred storage settings. Passware Kit Agent performance is not affected by the storage type, so the “Standard SSD” or “Standard HDD” options can be used. No additional data storage is required. Click “Next” to setup the network:
Once you have finished with the Disks, click “Next: Networking >”.
In the “NIC Network security group” section, select “Advanced” and create a new security group with a preferred name:
Click “Review + create”, and once you are happy with the settings, click “Create”:
Wait for the deployment process to complete. The setup of a Linux-based virtual machine is finished.
Now choose “All resources” page from the top left menu:
Double-click on “Network security group”:
From the left menu, choose “Open inbound security rules”:
Add a new inbound rule to allow connections to port 10776 (before 2024v1 - 10555) via UDP protocol:
Click “Add”.
The Azure instance is now configured and running!
Setting up the Passware Cloud Agent on the Azure Instance
Go back to “All resources” and select the “Public IP address” resource:
Copy the IP address from the “Overview” section:
Open PuTTY again and paste your VM IP address into the “Host name” field:
Click “Open”, then click “Accept” in the pop-up “Security Alert” window:
Enter the login you specified during the VM setup and the private key password that you saved in the text editor:
You are now logged in to your Azure VM account.
Download a Linux version of Passware Kit Agent from
https://www.passware.com/distributed/free/
The .tar.gz archive can be transferred to the VM instance by using the “pscp.exe” tool from the Putty folder. To do that, run the following command on the host computer:
$ pscp.exe passware-kit-agent-64bit.tar.gz <username>@<vm ip address>:/home/ubuntu/
Or you can download the archive directly instead. Run the following command:
$ wget https://demo.passware.com/files/passware-kit-agent-64bit.tar.gz
Extract the archive by running the command:
$ tar -xvzf passware-kit-agent-64bit.tar.gz
Copy the following files to “folder /home/user”:
$ sudo mkdir -p /home/user
$ sudo cp passware-kit-agent-64bit/passware-kit-agent /home/user /passware-kit-agent
$ sudo cp passware-kit-agent-64bit/agent.conf /home/user/agent.conf
$ sudo cp passware-kit-agent-64bit/agentwrapper.sh /home/user /agentwrapper.sh
$ sudo /home/user/passware-kit-agent -l
Make sure Passware Kit Agent detects the GPU by running the following command:
$ sudo /home/user/passware-kit-agent -l
If you see errors like these:
./passware-kit-agent: error while loading shared libraries: libgsf- 1.so.114:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Please try the following command and then run the Agent again:
$ sudo apt-get install libgsf-1-114
Set up the Passware Kit Agent as a daemon:
$ sudo cp passware-kit-agent-64bit/init-debian.sh /etc/init.d /passware-kit-agent
$ sudo update-rc.d passware-kit-agent defaults
Set up the firewall rules (before 2024v1 - port 10555):
$ sudo ufw allow ssh
$ sudo ufw allow 10776/udp
$ sudo ufw enable
$ sudo ufw status
Set up the connection password. Open the file “/home/user/agentwrapper.sh” for editing:
$ sudo vim /home/user/agentwrapper.sh
Add the environment variable with the connection password by adding the following line:
export PASSWARE_AGENT_CONNECTION_PASSWORD=<password>
Save the file.
Set up the core dump generation:
$ echo "core.%t.%e.%p" | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
If necessary, edit the configuration file of the Passware Kit Agent. Below are the instructions to create the simplest configuration file:
$ sudo mkdir -p /home/user/passware/settings
$ sudo mkdir -p /home/user/passware/tmp
$ sudo mkdir -p /home/user/passware/update
$ sudo vim /home/user/agent.conf
In Vim Editor, replace the contents of the “agent.conf” file with the following text:
[General]
AgentSettingsFolder = ./passware/settings
LogsFolder = ./passware/tmp
UpdatesFolder = ./passware/update
[Network]
ConnectionMode = auto
Reboot the VM and connect to it using PuTTY as described above:
$ sudo reboot
Check the status of the passware-kit-agent daemon to make sure that it is running:
$ sudo systemctl status passware-kit-agent
You can now connect the Linux Agent from Passware Kit.
Using GPU acceleration in Microsoft Azure
For password recovery with hardware acceleration, you need to install the GPU drivers. Please follow the official Microsoft guide to do that:
Install NVIDIA GPU drivers on N-series VMs running Linux
For Debian-based Linux distributives, you can also install the GPU drivers by running the following commands:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt install ubuntu-drivers-common ocl-icd-opencl-dev
$ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
$ sudo reboot
Reconnect to VM as described above.
Running Passware Kit Forensic
Launch Passware Kit Forensic on your main machine. Go to Tools | Options | Hardware, and click “+ Cloud Unit” at the bottom of the page:
Enter your Azure Virtual machine IP address in the “Public IP Address” field and the password you have specified in the environment variable setup in the “Authentication key” field:
Click “Add Unit” and make sure the unit is displayed in the “Network and Cloud Units” section:
The Passware Kit Agent for Linux on Microsoft Azure is now connected, and you can use it for distributed password recovery!
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