Passware Kit is a set of more than 30 programs to recover lost passwords for a great variety of applications. It helps to dismiss system administrators' favorite situation: a sticker on the display with a detailed list of passwords in use... But look, what else can we do? Everybody knows it's impossible to remember them. Can't we possibly keep the list somewhere else? No. Because of the high probability to forget where we put it. So, Passware Kit might be what we really need.

Passware Kit's trial version allows to decrypt the first two letters of a password. The kit represents a number of programs with approximately the same interface, but cracking passwords for different applications. Each program can be bought separately, and in the case it will naturally cost more than in a kit. Time of recovery depends on the initial application's encryption algorithm. An incomplete list of the programs is on the screenshot below. Let's examine some of them as examples.

The "choose a file and recover" approach – a simplest one – is what characterizes password recovery for a large number of programs. Organizer Key, Paradox Key, Peachtree Key, Project Key, Quattro Key, etc. work this way.

Office Key recovers passwords for Excel, Word, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, VBA files and Outlook e-mail accounts. Two traditional approaches are in use: Dictionary and Brute-force. Users can enable them in the Settings option. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. The Dictionary method: all words from a dictionary list are tried as passwords. It is quick, but restricted by the content of a dictionary. The Brute-force method is quite slow, as all possible combinations of preset symbols are being checked. To make it quicker and more effective, we can enable Xieve optimization which skips checking meaningless characters combinations.

By default both methods and Xieve optimization are enabled. Other useful settings, such as words mutation, passwords length and pattern, symbol set, etc. are up to users. As for the program's work with my Outlook email account, it "recovered" the first two symbols of my 9-charater password unpleasantly quickly.

The same interface and approaches are used in Acrobat Key, RaR Key, Zip Key, OneNote Key etc.

Internet Explorer Key recovers a Content Advisor password, as well as web sites and forms passwords. So, your teenage children might find it helpful, especially taking into account that to crack passwords they learn before getting interested in nudity, sex and other attractive things. As you see, there is no Setting section here. It's explained by the simplicity of the encryption algorithm logics. Just click the recover button and get your passwords.

Passware offers two versions of this pack: Passware Kit ($355) and Passware Kit Enterprise ($495). Aside the difference in upgrade terms, 4 more modules are available for Passware Kit Enterprise and they make the difference of $145. The modules are: Windows Key (domain controller admin password), Lotus Notes, Encrypted File System and SQL.

The distinction between to crack and to recover falls into indistinct moral category. And to solely enjoy advantages offered by the kit, keep in mind just one, but reliable, password protecting the access to YOUR computer.

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