"It's official: The famous password-cracking tool L0phtCrack is back, and its creators plan to keep it that way.

L0phtCrack 6 tool, released Wednesday, was developed in 1997 by Christien Rioux, Chris Wysopal, and Peiter "Mudge" Zatko from the former L0pht Heavy Industries -- the hacker think tank best known for testifying before Congress that it could shut down the Internet in 30 minutes. In January of this year, Rioux, Wysopal, and Zatko bought back L0phtCrack from Symantec, and later announced they would build a new version of the tool with support for 64-bit Windows platforms and other new features.

"When Symantec stopped supporting L0phtCrack [in 2005], a lot of people were still using it. They left their customers high and dry," says Mudge, who, along with his co-developers, had initially worried that could happen. "We had clauses in place so that if Symantec ever did cease to support and maintain it, we could have certain options [to get it back]. We didn't want somebody to take it from us and deep-six it. We thought it was a useful tool.""

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