// COMPLETE THREAD

PWL files

2 expanded posts · every known parent and child

NODE 9f122ecfPWL files Chris Rowley <bc192@freenet.carleton.ca>Tue, 29 Dec 1998 17:32:56 +0800

I've been trying to figure out the method of encryption for OSR2 Win95 and
Win98 *.pwl files and I was hoping someone had some details about the
method used. I've been told that resources are encrypted using RC4 with
a MD5 hash of the password as the key, although I haven't had any luck
using this information to decrypt resources with a known password. 
Does anyone have it figured out?

NODE 338c7b9dRe: PWL files Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>Wed, 30 Dec 1998 02:32:37 +0800

Chris Rowley <bc192@freenet.carleton.ca> writes:
> I've been trying to figure out the method of encryption for OSR2 Win95 and
> Win98 *.pwl files and I was hoping someone had some details about the
> method used. [...] Does anyone have it figured out?

I think Peter Gutmann and someone else figured it out sometime ago.
Probably you could find the info on Peter's web page:

	http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/

or search the archives for "PWL" && "windows".

Adam