Easy password recovery with these five applications

By Brien Posey January 4, 2013, 2:44 AM PST

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Easy password recovery with these five applications

Ultimate ZIP Cracker 1

ntThis gallery is also available as a post in the Five Apps Blog.

ntFew things in life are more frustrating than needing to open a file, but not being able to remember the password that will allow it. Thankfully, there are a variety of utilities designed to help crack forgotten passwords.

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ntFive Apps

nt1. Ultimate ZIP Cracker

ntAs the name implies, Ultimate ZIP Cracker is a utility for retrieving lost passwords for ZIP files. This program is completely utilitarian and there is nothing fancy about it at all, but it works. In preparation for writing this bog post I created a ZIP file and assigned it a password of 1234. Ultimate ZIP Cracker cracked the password in less than a second.

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Ultimate ZIP Cracker 2

ntUltimate ZIP Cracker sells for $59.00, but there is a free trial version available for download.

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Ultimate ZIP Cracker 3

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Free Word Excel Password Recovery Wizard 1

nt2. Free Word Excel Password Recovery Wizard

ntFree Word Excel Password Recovery Wizard is a free utility for retrieving lost passwords to Microsoft Word and Excel documents. This utility can perform either a dictionary lookup or a brute force crack.

ntCredit: Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Free Word Excel Password Recovery Wizard 2

ntIn preparation for testing this tool, I assigned a five digit password to a Microsoft Word document. The tool allows you to configure the lengths of the passwords that you want to attempt. I configured the utility to perform a brute force crack using only five digit passwords. The crack completed successfully in less than ten seconds.

ntCredit: Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Free Word Excel Password Recovery Wizard 3

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Word Password Recovery Master 1

nt3. Word Password Recovery Master

ntWord Password Recovery Master is a utility designed to remove password protection from Microsoft Word documents. However, the software requires Internet access to do so.

ntCredit: Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Word Password Recovery Master 2

ntWord Password Recovery Master sells for $14.98, but a free trial download is available. The trial version of this software will confirm that password removal is possible for your document, but you cannot actually remove the password without purchasing the full version.

ntCredit: Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Wondershare PDF Password Remover 1

nt4. Wondershare PDF Password Remover

ntWondershare PDF Password Remover is a utility that is designed to remove passwords and restrictions from PDF files. The utility works by creating a brand new, unlocked version of the PDF document.

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Wondershare PDF Password Remover 2

ntWondershare PDF Password Remover sells for $14.95, but a free trial download is available. The trial version is limited to extracting five pages from a protected document.

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Wondershare PDF Password Remover 3

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Windows Password Recovery Bootdisk 1

nt5. Windows Password Recovery Bootdisk

ntWindows Password Recovery Bootdisk This utility works by creating a boot disk that you must boot your computer from in order to recover the password. The reason why a boot disk is used is because it allows the password recovery process to occur outside of the Windows operating system so that the operating system’s various protective measures can be avoided.

ntCredit: Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Windows Password Recovery Bootdisk 2

ntWindows Password Recovery Bootdisk sells for $19.95, but a free trial version is available for download.

ntAlso read:

nttFive trustworthy password recovery tools

nttReset Windows passwords with the help of Linux

nttGet password reset info for users with Windows PowerShell script

ntCredit: Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

By Brien Posey

* 1988 - Started teaching myself about computers \ * 1992 - Mainframe programmer for an insurance company \ * 1993 - Network Administrator for a different insurance company \ * 1996 - Author for The Cobb Group \ * 1998 - Network Administrator

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