Cain and Abel is a Windows-based password cracking tool that is effective against Microsoft operating systems. Hackers with this tool can simply recover the passwords for their target machines. They create a network adapter that is used to listen in to routers, and from here they can get a number of passwords from hosts sending out traffic through the affected router. The tool cracks passwords using dictionary, brute-force, and cryptanalysis. It can also record conversations that take place through VOIP, unscramble passwords, uncover cached passwords, and analyze the routing protocols of an internal network. The tool is surprisingly effective in its attacks to a point where it is choosy and ignores easily fixable bugs.

To use the tool, one has to turn off the Windows firewall. From there, the tool can be used to create a packet-listening adapter.

After this, the IP address of a router is entered. The tool will be able to listen to all packets sent to the router by hosts in the network. Passwords travelling from the hosts through the router can then be sniffed by the attacker. The following figure shows a screenshot of the interface of the Cain and Abel tool. The usernames that have *empty* in the NT Password field have no passwords while the rest have some password protection. The <8 field displays an asterisk (*) if the password is less than eight characters. The password can be hacked via dictionary, brute-force, and cryptanalysis attacks, as shown in the Context menu: