Principles of Online Password Cracking for Excel, Word, and PDF

 To decrypt files, you must know that there is no software or tool that can directly remove the password.

Most people don't think that recovering the password of an encrypted document is a very slow and resource-intensive process, but it is.

Below, we will explain in simple language what the password recovery process is and how it works on our cloud services. How to recover a lost password Let's assume that you accidentally lost the password for a protected file and you want to recover the password.

 First of all, you should not waste time trying to find a program to easily crack protected files, because such a program does not exist. All modern software, such as MS Office, uses encryption algorithms to encrypt data; The stability of these algorithms has been mathematically proven. Therefore, the password recovery process is a long search through a large number of variants to find the correct password. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the work: a 60-character password has over 60 trillion (60 * 1018) variants. This number only reflects a password consisting of English letters, numbers, and special symbols. If Greek letters and other symbols were available, the number of possible variants would increase further. Therefore, even supercomputers would not be able to perform a direct search through such a large number of possible passwords in a reasonable time (the so-called brute-force method), because the testing process for each possible password requires complex mathematical calculations, which require a large amount of processor time and power. The more complex the encryption algorithm, the slower the password search process. Recover the password through a dictionary, but things aren't as bad as they seem. People usually choose "easy to remember" passwords, which are easier to recover. Many commonly used passwords have simple, easy-to-read forms or are compiled according to certain rules. These are common words such as "shadow," pet nicknames, Word combinations such as "letmein," words plus numbers such as "John1234," birth dates, simple combinations of numbers such as "654321," letter neighbors on the keyboard such as "asdcxz," and other types of passwords that are easy for almost anyone to remember.

 Compared to the 60 trillion possibilities, these types of combinations are not many, which greatly simplifies our task. Currently, we have collected a database of over 20 billion commonly used passwords for brute-force cracking. This password database gives us a good chance, but it still does not guarantee 100% success. Nevertheless, we managed to find the password in more than half of the cases, which is a good result.  

 Brute-force passwords using masks If you know the structure of a lost password, you can use masks to search for all possible passwords. For example, if you know that your password consists of 8 or 9 characters, starting with "999" with the remaining characters being lowercase English letters will make the search process much easier. In this case, the total number of all possible variants is 333,629,036. Our compute cluster will brute-force such a protected file in just a few minutes. Brute-forcing passwords with dictionaries is a fixed-cost job, but brute-forcing with masks is a custom task. You can use a custom request page to describe all the information you know about the lost password: the expected length and character set, etc. Perhaps, you know the characters at the beginning or end of the password. We can create masks based on these criteria, calculate the total number of possible password variants, and let you know the cost of the job. Please note that this will be a prepaid job, and success is guaranteed only if the specified mask parameters are correct. If you make a mistake in describing the password structure (for example, the password is actually longer and/or contains characters outside the specified set), the combination mask will not help you find it. However, the work has been completed and the payment is non-refundable. Use brute-force cracking of masks only if you have determined the exact password structure! Can I use my home computer to retrieve my lost password? Actually, no. Of course, you can try some password recovery programs on your computer, but be aware of some important facts: Most of these programs are shareware. In free mode, they will allow you to search for passwords of very limited length (usually no more than 4 characters).

A sophisticated user would successfully try such a program and purchase it, hoping to crack a longer password. However, the number of possible variants with longer passwords does not grow linearly, but rather exponentially. For example, the process of cracking a four-character password involves searching only 15 million alphanumeric variants. A five-character password has 931 million possible variations (62 times), while a six-character password has approximately 58 billion. Even for a very powerful computer, this is a daunting task, so don't even try to crack a 7-character password. The functionality of the cracking program is limited by computer resources.

In our cloud system, we have a powerful cluster of high-performance GPU servers. This is a distributed computing system. In other words, passwords can be recovered by several powerful servers at the same time, and we can do in a few hours what modern home computers would take months or even years to do.

The shared software program does not contain a good password dictionary. All it can do is produce a combinatorial attack: combine words and numbers from a small dictionary and change the capitalization of letters. This takes a long time, and it only helps crack the simplest passwords. Last but not least, when buying a crack program, you have to pay even if you can't find the password. We only charge for successfully found passwords. Fast, guaranteed and convenient. Instant password recovery usually refers to the rapid recovery of passwords under weak encryption.

For example, a password for an Access database or an older Word or Excel file. Password reset In some cases, you can reset your password by replacing or deleting it directly from the file. Brute force attack This is the most common method of decrypting files. This type of attack simply tries to recover your password by combining each character in a given set. Recover Password co For example, when using the lowercase letter "a", 26 combinations (from "a" to "z") are required. In the case of two letters, we have = 676. We are dealing with exponential growth, so automatic password combinations are higher, making password recovery more difficult. Of course, the combination can have uppercase letters, numbers, or special characters, in which case a long password recovery can be completed in a few days or weeks (depending on the length). We use specialized software to distribute computing power across multiple servers, thereby significantly reducing password recovery time. Dictionary attack This recovery method uses a dictionary. Professional software tries every Word in the dictionary as a password. In addition to common words, a good dictionary also contains some combinations commonly used in ciphers, such as "qwerty". Dictionary password recovery methods are usually much faster than brute force attacks. Of course, password recovery will be slower if the dictionary is large, but this method is usually used before brute-force password recovery. There are different methods that can combine the two types of recovery described above (hybrid methods). Password change This recovery method is commonly used when the password may be typed incorrectly. Typically, the user knows that the password contains a Word, and perhaps some numbers. Either the password was entered incorrectly, or characters were omitted. Usually the number of combinations is small, and the password will be recovered quickly. Plain text password attack This method is most commonly used for password-protected ZIP archives. Password recovery is easier when part of the archived content is known. For example, we know some encrypted files in the archive. Alternatively, the archive contains certain standard DLLs that can be found in Windows or unencrypted on the Internet.  

FAQ

 What is a ZIP password? (Definition) A ZIP file is a file format used to archive other files by compressing them. The files contained in the archive can be password protected. This is the password for the ZIP file. How do I find the password for a ZIP file? The only way to recover ZIP passwords is to test them. Select the ZIP file on your device and click Find. How to speed up password search? Searching is a time-consuming task (usually several hours), and it is recommended to limit the search based on the size of the password and the characters used.Example: A 3-character password containing only lowercase letters requires 17,576 attempts, while if it consists of uppercase, lowercase, and numbers, it requires 238,328 attempts (more than 13 times). The more powerful it is using the resources of your browser and device, the faster it will compute.

 How does a ZIP password cracker work?

 The tool creates a list of possible passwords based on the selected characters and the assumed password length, and attempts to extract the file from the ZIP archive.