Part 1 of this series may be found here.
Part 2 of this series may be found here.
Part 3 of this series may be found here.
Opera 10 and above
Opera stores the following information in an encrypted file called wand.dat:
- Login URL
- Main website URL
- Username field ID
- Username
- Password field ID
- Password
The wand file stores the data in encrypted blocks consisting of the following fields:
- Size of encrypted block (4 bytes)
- DES Key Length (1 byte)
- DES Key (8 bytes)
- Size of encrypted data (4 bytes)
- Encrypted data
Wand.dat is stored locally on your computer in the following locations:
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Opera\Opera\wand.dat Windows Vista\Windows 7: C:\users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\wand.dat
The issue with Opera’s security is that it uses a static salt to encrypt the data. The salt is:
0x83, 0x7D, 0xFC, 0x0F, 0x8E, 0xB3, 0xE8, 0x69, 0x73, 0xAF, 0xFF.
To decrypt the data, a hacker simply retrieves the DES key (8 bytes) from each encrypted block of data in the wand file. They then compute the MD5 checksum of the byte stream consisting of the salt and the retrieved DES key. Next, compute another MD5 checksum of the byte stream consisting of the first MD5 checksum, the original salt and original DES key (in order). These two MD5 checksums are used to create schedule keys for decryption with a DES vector component comprised from the second MD5 checksum. Finally, the data can be decrypted using the known Triple DES decryption function. The decrypted data will be stored in Unicode but you can easily convert it into ascii.
End result – a hacker only needs a copy of your wand.dat file to easily decrypt all your usernames and passwords.
Excellent Tips 