Forum Thread: How to Hack a Facebook Account When You Know the Previous Password of a Person?

I'm kinda new to this site and to OTWs tutorials. (BTW. awesome so far!). Anyhoo... the biggest problem people have with passwords, psychologically, is the difficulty most people find in memorizing a lot of passwords. Further, most people prefer passwords that are similar to each other so that if they change a password, it will be as easy to remember as the previous one. People don't like change. Seriously.

This method is never a guarantee as you can never be sure what is going on in someone's head, but we can try to leverage the known password in order to create a small list of likely passwords. You can do this by hand or you can use a program like Jack the Ripper. First start with a password like, for example, applesauce. The most obvious edit a great many people use on such a password is to add numbers to the end, or to change the number at the end. For example, applesauce could be applesauce1, or 2. Another frequent edit is to change the capitalization of a word. For example, applesauce could become Applesauce, AppleSauce, or ApPlEsAuCe (I regard the last one to be unlikely). If a website permits it, words like apple_sauce could be used. Obviously you can also combine these together to form passwords like Apple_Sauce2. Finally, look for similar words. Applesauce is a simple password, but think about words that are related to it like applepie or sweetsauce.

These will give you a few passwords you can try to get into an account. Just remember, never do this without your friend's permission (or challenge!), be wary of security rules such as authentication lockouts, and for safety's sake, don't do this from home or a place traceable to you. This may be a game to you and your friend, but the security guru that runs the place might not trust it.