Here’s a handy little freeware Windows application that just might save you a lot of grief at some point. It’s called Snadboy’s Revelation. It does one thing and one thing only – it reveals hidden passwords in applications. For example, Just the other day I needed my database password out of the program I normally use to connect to the database, but the password was hidden behind *******. So, I ran Revelation and got the password out.
Here is how it works. Run whatever program you have that has a password you need revealed. Now run Revelation. Drag the crosshairs from Revelation and point it to the password field. The password text should appear in Revelation.
Another nice feature is that it can run from a flash drive and it’s only 116 KB. Just run the Revelation installer to install it on your computer, then copy the Revelation.exe and the RevelationHelper.dll to your flash drive. I keep it on my flash drive all the time just in case I ever need it in a pinch.
Sadly, Revelation does not reveal all passwords though. Most notably, it can’t reveal passwords in Firefox. I know of another way to get the passwords out of webpages in Firefox though – we’ll cover that at a later date. Revelation does work in Internet Explorer though and it works in almost all of the other Windows applications I have tried it on. Give it a try. If you don’t need it now, you may need it in the future (and it’s fun to play with).
FYI: This post is also at TipMonkies