One of the ways to make sure that your work is protected is to use as a distribution mode the PDF format provided by Adobe, together with the security options it offers. And when I say security options, I mean setting a user and owner password or attaching a digital certificate – as always, good in theory, but complicated in practice. Even if setting a password is basically a 2-second job, you may never know if you are actually going to remember it, so your projects might become inaccessible even to their author.
This is where Recover PDF Password comes in. Developed by Eltima Software, the application can recover even the most complicated passwords. Even if the interface is mostly self explanatory, making it very easy to use, and the recovering speed is highly influenced by your dictionary selections, so remembering at least some information about the lost password will drastically reduce the process, time-wise speaking.
The Looks Recover PDF Password provides quick access to all the features within a very well-organized window. At the top of the window you will see the Open PDF button, although Recover PDF Password also supports drag and drop. Once you have loaded a PDF the Start Recovery button becomes active, but before actually starting the process you must customize your search in order to reduce the processing time.
The Works Recover PDF Password provides three different processing methods. The first one is based on the password length, which means that you must specify the minimum and maximum password size. The second is designed for the ones that have a certain pattern, like a text string followed by symbols, and you should specify the part that you can remember. The last one is the most exhaustive and includes all the possibilities, but it will require a lot more time.
Each recovery method, except for the exhaustive one, applies the dictionary rules and you have the possibility to specify the ones that are applicable for each particular file. This way you can include in the search upper and lower case Latin letters, digits, special symbols, like (!@...): `~!@#$%^&*()-_=+\|,./<>?;:'"[]{}, space and tab symbols, but also printable or non-printable additional characters.
Once you have set all the search criteria, you must specify if you want to find only the user password, or if the owner one is also a matter of interest. All you have to do next is press the Start recovery button and wait while the process is running. You can see how much time has elapsed at all times, and you can also pause or stop recovering. When the user or owner password will be available a window will appear, displaying the recovered data and how much time was needed, but you will also receive Growl notifications.
The fact is that the process is not necessarily effective all the time. The entire application is based on the trial-and-error method, so the recovery can fail if you excluded some of the categories contained in the dictionary but the failure may also be the result of Adobe’s different encryption methods for Windows and Mac.
When the decryption is complete you will be able to see the result at any time in the History window, which stores general information about each session. A more detailed log is available in the History Pro window where you can see all the used combinations. Next to the History button at the top of the application’s window you will find the Get Info button. This feature shows all the metadata information regarding the current document that Recover PDF Password was able to decipher.
The Good Considering how many accounts on different services a common computer user with Internet access has nowadays, remembering all the passwords that one could have used at one time seems almost impossible. The good part with most of these services is that you can always use the “forgot password” feature and have it emailed to you in no time. The fact that Recover PDF Password is doing pretty much the same thing for your PDFs might be, like in many other lost password cases, life saving.
The Bad Recover PDF Password can not recover the passwords if the document was secured using a digital certificate. The feature is supposed to be implemented in future developments, but for now the limitation seems to be at least a little annoying. Also the price ($39.95) might be a bit too much.
The Truth Simple and well organized, Recover PDF Password appears to be exactly what you were looking for and then some. Unfortunately the recovering process for relatively complicated or long passwords is quite time consuming, and if you take into account the speed of some search engines it may seem to be almost forever.
You can test Recover PDF Password yourself using the Demo version, which will display only the first 3 symbols contained in the password, the rest being masked by “*”.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
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(4/5)
