Lost passwords probably account for tens of millons of dollars worth of lost data, time and energy every year. While accurate statistics don't really exist, it's safe to say that almost every home and business computer owner has been frustrated at one time or another by inaccessible locked documents, spreadsheets and other files. If you don't have the password, you can't get at the data in the file. With passwords and other data security requirements being imposed more often and more widely at the vast majority of businesses around the world, it's probably smart to have a handy password recovery utility at hand.

Since 1998, Passware has been supplying Help Desk personnel, IT professionals, and business users with security tools designed to recover lost passwords. The main product, Password Recovery Kit, works with all versions of Microsoft Office, including the latest Office 2007 releases of Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, Visio and VBA. The software also recovers passwords from Quicken, QuickBooks, WordPerfect, WinZip, Windows 2000/XP/NT, 1-2-3, ACT!, Paradox, Organizer, Adobe Acrobat, WinZip and many other popular business software programs (the current total is 26). The SureZip recovery module decrypts most WinZip archives. The Windows module lets a user reset Windows security if the Administrator password, secure boot password, or key disk have been lost. The program can also be used to create Windows NT Key boot disks which can be used to unlock a system.

Installing Password Recovery Kit is extremely simple and takes less than a minute. The program entry on the Windows Start>Programs menu opens up into a very long list of key utilities (Word key, Lotus key, Excel key, etc.). The software uses a combination of security, decompression and decryption algorithms and dictionary look-ups to do its work. Using Password Recovery Kit (PRK) is even simpler than installing it. Simply run the program and choose the unlock key from among the file types that the program processes. Each unlock key corresponds to a specific file format, i.e.: the Word key is used on Microsoft Word documents, the Excel key is used on Microsoft Excel documents, and so on. Launch the Word key, set the password recovery options (or use the defaults), load a Word doc. That's it. Password Recovery Kit starts working automatically.

The software finds a password by literally trying millions of passwords per minute. The Brute-force attack method is the slowest approach and can try all passwords up to 7 characters in length. The Xieve attack method is faster and capable of recovering passwords of up to 9 characters. The Dictionary attack method (which uses only letter combinations) is fastest and there's no limitation on password length. In my tests I found that the fastest results using any of the methods came from having at least a vague idea of what the lost password might have been. There's no sane reason to attempt a recovery using letters only if the file owner insists that the password was all numbers. Save yourself some time and define the recovery parameters as narrowly as possible. The password "helena" (on a Word 2000 doc) required exactly one-tenth of a second to recover - amazingly fast. However, the password "helena1" required a full hour to recover. Ditto for "1543267" versus "154a267". But if the document is important and contains information which is not available anywhere else, it's worth the wait.