@18 Rob - you have to run the Activate.exe file to register the product. No need to purchase upgrade.

I'm finding it is only running at 40-odd passwords per second. I switched priority to "High" but there was no change. It's using about 15% of my CPU and 12 MB of my RAM but there's over 80% of both unused.

@ # 17 FarFlung

Your calculations are right on the money, and this is the reason that NONE of these archive password crackers work. You explain why in very good detail. Thanks.

Regarding the software, this is a favoured software genre for Adware or Malware. Im not making accusations, but probably because of the nature of its operation, my Avast Antivirus clobbered this as 'undesirable'. At that point I was not in the mood to argue with it.

Thanks to the Team, but it is time to move on to another day...

There's a very effective method to finding a password. Simply find the owner and torture them until they give it up. :)

Seriously through, if you own the file then you usually only need the first few letters to help you remember what the password you used was. So as long as the program can come up with the first three or four digits in reasonable time it's useful. I tend to use multiple passwords and over time I might forget an older one.

The only time I've run into password problems is when someone has forgotten their e-mail password and those can be reset.

People, this type of program has its place. Brute-force with mask, allowing you to recover archives using patterns based on what little you remember of the password, or your common password style.


I used to have an old set of 6 compaq servers running a trimmed knoppix cluster with a modified 'john the ripper'. It would easily take 2-3 weeks for even reasonably simple passwords. So don't get grumpy or disappointed if you try to smash a random archive using a desktop PC with the usual GUI overhead without spectacular results.

The suggestion from Ashraf at dotTech, Appnimi All-In-One Password Unlocker is loaded with a virus which is trying to collapse my system at the mooment.
It pretends to try and crack a rar password but it's impossible to stop! no matter how much you click on it. Also, when checking why my system is suddenlyacting weird, I found the file has a virus called Whitebox.... beware..

I generally enjoy the views of Giovanni and I am delighted to see the opinions of Ashraf (DotTech) (why not vary the number of thumbs up? Was very convenient for non-English speaking) but .. I tested your alternatives, this software is absolutely correct (except AES ... since it is incompatble).

The speed issue is raised: it is not due to the software but your computer!

I have a recent Dell XPS : more than 5000 pw/sec
http://www.bild.me/bild.php?file=1356965ThumbUp.jpg

For anyone interested in actually calculating the number of permutations the following link is available:-
http://www.statisticshowto.com/calculators/permutation-calculator-and-combination-calculator/

Set the top box to the number of available characters, say 94, set the second box to the number of letters in the password, the next two boxes should be set to yes and yes.

The result is a maximum number of passwords it will have to check using brute force, hence it shouldn't take any longer than this number divided by the number of passwords per second.


My previous result of about 3000 passwords per second was checked again and is correct, where the 35 came from I don't know, my windup computer was faster than that.

This may be slightly off target, but is there any program that can recover my Master Password in Roboform. I have had it for at least 7-8 yrs now & for what ever reason I can not get into my program ty.

In my day we didn't need these fancy password cracking softwares. We only needed a password to get back on the base after a night of carousing and drinking, and it was never the same twice.

I have tried such things before.

Please don't waste your time.

All it does is iterate some silly series of guesses.

It will not be able to crack any password even if your password is of below average security standard.

Instead, please spend your time meaningfully in recording the passwords to your files. For future use.

So will this software work with passwords over 3 characters once registered? During the install we're notified the unregistered version is only good for 3 character passwords. I see no mention of it working with longer passwords if registered, only if we purchase the upgrade?

First of all, using a word in the dictionary as a password is very insecure, to the point of being stupid actually, unless it's a system that you really don't care if someone guesses it (like a news site forum).
There are 94 possible keyboard characters on a standard computer keyboard that can be used in a password (there might be a few that some systems don't allow, so I'll round that number down to 90).

Anyway, if you use a password of just 8 elements, with each element being one of the 90 possible characters, there would be over 4.3 quadrillion possible combinations. For perspective, if someone had 1000 computers doing nothing 24/7 but trying 100 password every second, it would take over 1300 YEARS to try every possible combination.
Based on that, I'd say that if someone has an archive that they REALLY didn't want anyone to get into, what could it contain that would be worth the effort? Even given the possibility that the 200th combination might just happen to be the right one, it still isn't worth it. This program can't even do that (100,000 attempts per second)
I will admit, I HAVE NOT, AND WILL NOT try this program, so I'm not actually critiquing the effectivenes of this particular giveaway, but the concept applies; unless you're dealing with very weak passwords, this program is useless.

I have tried this software before, it only helps if the password was made of English words. If your password was random letters and number mixed with upper and lower cases, this software is useless.
It took 3 days and 3 nights to find the password "HOME" as I ran it as a test file with win RAR.
Now, if your password was over 10 digits long and had only one English word in it, it took 7 days to crack it, but when I added two other characters in front and back, it never found it end went into endless loop after it went trough all of the built in dictionary.

Well, at first I thought: woh, finally a very useful app which cannot be replaced easily with FREE alternatives....but it's NOT!

Why? Because for mysterious reasons it doesn't support ZIP files encrypted with AES-256 algorithm, which is the most common chiper used to protect ZIP & PDF files.

So in my view this app is pretty much USELESS and damn expensive, taking into account the limited use it offers to its users.

THUMBS DOWN from me!!

BEST (and BETTER) FREE ALTERNATIVES (just pay attention while installing them, since most of them are Ad supported with bundled crapware!)

- (Portable) Appnimi All-In-One Password Unlocker (==> my Personal First Choice)
It searches for both USER and OWNER PASSWORDS required to open protected zip,rar,PDF,xls,xlsx files by using Brute Force algorithm and Dictionary method!!! As far as I know it's the only FREEWARE able to crack any kind of file protected by USER PASSWORD, which prevents users from opening and reading any protected file (eh,eh,eh...I let you imagine what you could do with this magic FREE tool!! Please don't abuse it!!). And of course, unlike this GAOTD worth 30 BUCKS (??? Come on...LOL!), it supports ZIP files encrypted with AES-256.
Happy cracking dudes!!!

http://dottech.org/104302/windows-how-to-crack-password-protected-or-encrypted-zip-pdf-rar-xls-and-xlsx-files

How to use it:
http://dottech.org/104302/windows-how-to-crack-password-protected-or-encrypted-zip-pdf-rar-xls-and-xlsx-files

* John The Ripper (only for advanced users)
Very powerful and fast command line multiplatform tool designed to crack not only passwords but also hashes, by bruteforcing a massive number of algorithms like MD5, DES, Blowfish etc....
Its main purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords in the attempt to make your system more secure, so it's not just a cracking tool.

http://www.openwall.com/john

How to use it to crack a password protected zip file:
http://synacl.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/decrypting-a-zip-using-john-the-ripper

* Portable Zip Password Cracker Pro
Pretty old but still damn effective FREE password cracking tool supporting brute force attack. Once setting the right parameters, this app is able to generate a list of all possible password combinations including uppercase/lowercase letters, space characters, shifted characters and symbols for numbers.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Password-Managers-Generators/Zip-Password-Cracker-Pro.shtml

- PicoZip Recovery Tool
Yet another pretty old FREE tool which can retrieve any ZIP file passwords you may have forgotten, using brute force or dictionary-based. Supports self-extracting Zip files, as well as over 650,000 English dictionary words (lowercase alphabets, numbers, all ASCII characters) and many other languages.

http://picozip.com/prt/index.html

- FCrackZip
Nice FREE zip file password retriever app which supports multiple protected zip files with multiple files, as well as brute force cpmask'ed images. It works but may take some time before finding the right password.

http://soft.rubypdf.com/software/fcrackzip-10-windows-version

Full Tutorial:
http://www.ztuts.com/2012/04/how-to-crack-zip-password-using.html
http://www.iweconsulting.net/index/entry/entryid/3/starting-with-fcrackzip.html

Enjoy!

My 2 cents for today's giveaway!!

#4 #6 Belfast
On my quad core processor, three gig ram I obtained the following results
3 character password approximately 2800 pw/sec
6 character password approximately 2750 pw/sec

So any password of any reasonable size, don't hold your breath!

@charles #5...Your comment made me laugh. Asking if a legal program will do an illegal thing. . .

But, I can't imagine why it wouldn't.

@7, @8... Yes, but what if you had 10e20 computers? huh? huh?
ok, let's see. I have a few extra in the back room. Maybe I need to go dust them off. LOLOL.
Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Thanks GAOTD, but I must pass.

Humans: Their imperfection is perfect and their gullibility is endless.

If you consider this offering to be an answer to anything, that which was in question is probably not worth the effort.

Sure, you COULD unlock some random archive with this but the odds are just about as good that you would win the lottery and you probably shouldn't use up your luck with the latter on the former.

Other than the whole futility and gullibility thing, this is a *terrific* program. (Whew)

Bill #5 - didn't you know that most of those sites send you through endless data gathering and surveys until you give up because there is no password that will work? Besides, your asking for legal trouble, or a virus, or both...

From the website:
"The program can work with archives containing only one encrypted file".
It seems kind of unlikely that an archive contains only one file and makes it unusefull in most situations.
(Probably also in your case Charles ;o)

/Jakob

The only time I managed to find the password of a zip file was when I knew the contents of one of the files. The program I use would take the encrypted file and the un-encrypted file and calculate the three encryption keys.

It would also estimate the length of time to crack a password depending upon its length, computers were slower then and single core, however if memory serves me correctly a 16 digit password using the maximum range of characters would take thousands of years!

I do not believe it is in business any more nor are many of the others of a similar type, they failed because computers are not powerful enough for anything but a simple password.

#5 charles
It doesn't matter; the computer doesn't know who wrote the password ;-)

@ major woody

5 month isn't enough. LOL

52 lower&upper case letters
10 digits

62**16 /(364 D, 24h, 35 passes per sec)

caluculates about 2,59e21 years. A way older than the universe

Charles I suggest you stop trying to get pirated software and those surveys will not be an issue, and to answer your question, NO this will not work on websites, yes it can work on the supported archived files.

does anyone know if this can find passwords of files that were not created by yourself, eg torrents of cracked software, sick of filling out surveys to get the password

Say, it isn't true!

Calculates only 35 passes per sec!

I have an Intel I5-2500K Processor with 16 GB fast RAM.

A small dictionary file takes a day, brute force takes ...

Used this before.

I have a file I rar'ed and password protected as what I call

a vault for private text and word files.

Just in case the feds come er snooping.

Seriously, no bad stuff.

I protected it with just letters and numbers, 16 in length.

I ran the program list here for 5 months solid day-and-night.

Still didn't find the password.

However if you uses short passwords, maybe 5 or 6 characters long,

then maybe it will work.

I am trying the give away today and will run it for 6 months.

This does what it says. How often you need to crack .zip or .rar passwords is your issue. I guess it's one of those: If you need it, you NEED it programs.

Pros
*Supports cracking of ZIP, RAR, and ACE archives
*Supports brute-force, brute-force with mask, and dictionary attacks
*Can save cracking progress and pick it up at a later time without having to start from beginning
*Supports drag + drop

Cons
*Supports cracking of password-protected ZIPs (ZipCrypto) but not ZIPs encrypted using AES-256
*Dictionary that comes with the program is for English words only
*Ugly, outdated interface

Free Alternatives
Appnimi All-In-One Password Unlocker

Final Verdict
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