Password Cracking & Recovery

Data is sometimes protected by encryption or by simple passwords. In some cases a file can be seen but not read because the appropriate password is unavailable.

Most people use the same or similar passwords for different purposes. The average person has three passwords that they use, depending upon the sensitivity of the data. By gaining access to passwords associated with the weakest encryption systems, one can invariably gain access to the strongest ones, without the need to crack both. In modern computing there are two categories of encryption systems linked to the use of passwords.

“Weak” encryption systems, often used with files such as Microsoft Outlook™ or Microsoft Word™ , can be broken relatively simply by cracking the encryption algorithm itself.

“Strong” encryption systems such as PGP have algorithms that are much more difficult to crack. The usual method for ‘breaking’ these encryption systems is by guessing the password.

Palmer Data Technologies has tools that allow around 25,000,000 password guesses per second. The ‘library’ of passwords used to attempt to guess the correct answer become more and more complex as time goes on, until eventually the correct password is found. The time taken to ‘crack’ the password is a function of how complex the password is.