How to Use HTML to Find Passwords

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Web sites can be designed to be secure, or they can be made simple and easy. If someone wants to make a web site secure, there's going to be no way you can see a password, even your own password that you just entered—the password will be encrypted before you even send it. However, if someone sets up a web page with very basic security but still requires a password, you may be able to view that password in the plain text of your web page.

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Step 1

Navigate with your web browser to the page where you believe the password will be found. Normally this is on a page after someone enters their password.

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Step 2

View the source of the web page. This will be done through one of the menus in the Internet browser. Very often you will find this option in the View menu, for example, View, then Page Source. This will open a new window with the basic text of the web page.

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Step 3

Search through the web page for an input tag. The input tag will be a less than symbol followed by the word input. The word input may be in lower case or capital letters, it does not matter. There will usually be a number of these tags together in a group on the web page.

Step 4

Search for the input type of hidden. Somewhere after the input tag will be a type attribute. This will be the word type followed by an equals sign. Each input tag will have a type somewhere. Usually it will be right after the word input, but sometimes it will appear later in the line. It needs to be before a greater than sign that marks the end of the input tag. You need to find a line that says type=hidden.

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Step 5

Look for the name of the hidden attribute. Somewhere else on that same line you will see a name attribute. It will say name followed by an equals sign. Again, this may appear before or after the type attribute, but it usually appears immediately after the type=hidden. Once you have located a name that says name=password, you have found a password.

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Step 6

Locate the value of the password. The actual password that has been used will appear further still in the same input tag. The attribute is value and whatever appears after the value= part of the tag will be the actual password stored.

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