Total Commander FTP password recovery (Python)

Total Commander (formerly known as Windows Commander) is a classic file manager for Windows, Windows CE, Windows Phone, and now also Android.

Total Commander has a built-in FTP/FXP client and it keeps the FTP logins and encrypted passwords in wcx_ftp.ini configuration file.

I have reverse engineered and recreated the password decoding algorithm years ago.

It was made available by me to another FlashFXP software to import FTP connection profiles from Total Commander.

I give you source codes for both the original assembly decoding algorithm and a Python implementation of this algorithm.

Total Commander Online Password Decoder

You can either use one of the provided source codes or use my own online implementation to make things faster:

https://www.pelock.com/products/total-commander-ftp-password-recovery

Requirements

• Python 3.11+.
• pip (and a virtual environment for local development).

Installation

pip install total-commander-ftp-password-recovery

For local development from a git checkout:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage (library)

from binascii import hexlify

from total_commander_ftp_password import TotalCommanderPasswordDecoder

cipher_hex = "00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff"

decoder = TotalCommanderPasswordDecoder()
plain = decoder.decrypt_password(cipher_hex)

if plain is None:
    raise RuntimeError("Invalid ciphertext (bad hex, odd length, or too short).")

print(plain)  # decoded bytes
print(hexlify(plain).decode("ascii"))  # optional hex view

decrypt_password() accepts flexible hex input: ASCII case is ignored and whitespace between byte pairs is allowed (useful when pasting from an .ini file).

CLI

After installation via pip, use the console script:

tc-ftp-password-decode 00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff

From a git checkout (after pip install -e .), you can also run:

python -m total_commander_ftp_password.cli 00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff

Examples

• examples/basic_usage.py — minimal decrypt script.

Tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

References

• Total Commander FTP Password Recovery (article / online tool)
• Source code recovery / reverse engineering services

Author

Bartosz Wójcik

• Visit my site at — https://www.pelock.com
• X — https://x.com/PELock
• GitHub — https://github.com/PELock