Retrieving Auto Saved Skype Password on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Are you having trouble accessing your Skype account because you don’t remember the password? Don’t worry, if you have used the auto save feature on your Ubuntu 12.04 LTS machine, there might be a way to retrieve it.
According to Vanilla Skype Part 2 [page 67], when you ask Skype to save your password, it takes a hash md5(username and encrypts it using AES-256. The encrypted password is then stored in
skyper
password)/home/USER/.Skype/SKYPE_USER/config.xml under config->Lib->Account->Credentials3.
While you try to solve the problem with Skype customer service, there is a temporary solution you can try. Copy the config->Lib->Account->Credentials3 from the original machine to a config.xml file on a different machine (with the same Skype account) and you should be able to automatically login.
If the password itself is of high importance to you, there are some tools (commercial) available that can help you brute-force it. Since Skype uses a fast hashing algorithm, MD5, there is a decent chance of recovering the password if it isn’t very strong.