How to Recover Saved Passwords in Mozilla Firefox
This research article shows you all password secrets of Mozilla Firefox browser including where all your website passwords are stored, how it is stored and how to recover it automatically.
Firefox Password Secrets
Firefox browser saves all your website login passwords at following location
[Windows Vista/7/8/10] C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random name].default\ [Windows XP/2003] C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random name].default\
Older version of Firefox (before v32.0) used to store all website logins in a SQLite database file called ‘signons.sqlite’ in the above profile folder.
This database file has the table called “moz_logins” where each of the website login details are saved.
Here are some of the interesting fields stored in this table,
id - index of each website entry hostname - main link of the website or ipaddress formSubmitURL - login link of the website usernameField - name of the username field in the website encryptedUsername - encrypted username passwordField - name of the password field in the website encryptedPassword - encrypted password encType - value 1 indicates encrypted
Here formSubmitURL, encryptedUsername and encryptedPassword refers to website login link, encrypted username and encrypted password respectively.
Firefox uses Triple DES and SHA1 algorithm to encrypt both username & password. Finally the resulting password is stored in above file using Base64 format.
Newer version of Firefox (after v32.0) stores all the website logins in JSON format file called ‘logins.json’
Here is the sample of one of the website entry from this file,
{
"id":1,
"hostname":"https://accounts.google.com",
"httpRealm":null,
"formSubmitURL":"https://accounts.google.com",
"usernameField":"user",
"passwordField":"pwd",
"encryptedUsername":"MDIEEPgBBBBABBBEwFAYIbaZIhvcNAwcEaAFsqdqBAiJyHK56O9cid==",
"encryptedPassword":"MDoEEPgBCCCCAAAAAAEwFCDIKoZIBAtABCG4rNAexni08zRm4Sraz/",
"guid":"{46cfe997-9043-40e8-8207-6d6cf222bcb4}",
"encType":1,
"timeCreated":1304064618760,
"timesUsed":25
},
Here formSubmitURL, encryptedUsername and encryptedPassword refers to website login link, encrypted username and encrypted password respectively.
Similar to older version, new Firefox also uses Triple DES and SHA1 algorithm to encrypt both username & password. After encryption, resulting password is stored in Base64 format in the above file.
Firefox Master Password
Firefox also allows you to set Master Password to prevent others from stealing your website passwords. If the master password is set then without it website passwords cannot be decrypted.
To make it further secure, Firefox encrypts master password using one way hash algorithm. That means it cannot be decrypted instantly and only way to recover it using brute-force method which may take years based on length and complexity of master password.
Firefox stores master password details in files called key4.db and cert9.db in the same profile folder as above. Older version used filenames called key3.db and cert8.db.
How to Recover Firefox Passwords Automatically
Here is simple way to recover all your Firefox website passwords without worrying about where it is stored and how to decrypt it.
You can use our XenArmor Browser Password Recovery Pro software to instantly & easily recover all your saved website login passwords from Firefox as shown in video below,
Here are the simple steps to recover all your saved passwords,
- Step 1: Download & Install Browser Password Pro from here
- Step 2: Next launch the software on your computer
- Step 3: It will automatically discover, decrypt and display all the saved Firefox passwords as shown below
For more details, please refer to Online User Guide
Hope this article has helped you to understand the password secrets of Firefox browser.
Let us know what do you think. Please comment below if you have any queries or suggestions.
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