I have been suffering from this problem since more than year now … and really never paid attention towards it. Not much of a big-deal. But it was irritating.

Have you encountered the pop up window as below ?

If yes … then you must have chosen to password protect your account details saved in firefox. This is a very secured feature. But, what if you forgot the master password ? This becomes more irritating… when everytime you open a website for which you have saved a password in firefox .. and when the master password window pops up… you realize that you do not remember it anymore.. and just choose “Cancel” ! Everytime you do this .. you feel more frustrated.

Although there are methods to recover that master password … and that too by Brute Force, which is hit and trial process.  There is a tool “Firepassword” developed to retrieve the encrypted passwords from the firefox database. It is a console based tool and can be used offline. You need to know all the commands of it before using it. And then export it to a text file.

Coming back to resetting… me too .. forgot the master password and suffered more than a year and never really cared much. But, recently I came to know a trick to reset it and saved me.

Just follow the instructions below and you can get your master password RESET. But before that, please note that this method will neither recover your master password nor retrieve your account details saved in firefox. It just RESETS the master password. In a sense, it is good. Because, if anybody has to reset your password, then he/she can not get your account details saved in it.

So here is the procedure :

1. Open firefox browser.

2. In the address bar, simply copy the address below and paste it.

3. Hit enter.

4. You will be prompted : If you reset your master password, all your stored web and e-mail passwords, form data, personal certificates, and private keys will be forgotten. Are you sure you want to reset your master password ?

5. And in the bottom right, you will see options as below.

6. Choose “Reset”.

And done ! Now you can start fresh. And no more annoying pop up window, you don’t remember password of which.

Stay Tuned !

Get Gyan !