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Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery Unlocks PGP Protection
Elcomsoft, a specialist in password recovery, has added PGP support to ElcomsoftDistributed Password Recovery. The program offers administrators a comprehensivesolution for recovering passwords to MS-Office documents when employees forget theirpasswords, or when they deliberately add passwords to documents in an effort tosabotage their companies. The latest version can handle PGP encryption, includingPGP secret key rings (.SKR files), PGP disks (.PGD files), and PGP self-decryptingarchives.
Bef ore Distributed Password Recovery, the most effective way to recover a lostpassword was to put the locked file on the fastest machine in the company, and usebrute force to attack the password. Distributed Password Recovery lets youcoordinate all of the unused computing power of every computer on your LAN or WAN,and use distributed processing to restore the lost password.
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is the strongest industry-standard encryption, and iswidely used in all consumer and corporate markets. It is based on assymetric keys(public and private). If the private key is not available, then using brute forcemethods to break the encryption would take centuries, even on today's fastestcomputer. Elcomsoft has discovered a way to use the power of its DistributedPassword Recovery software to recover 5-character - and even longer - PGP passwords.
Distributed Password Recovery installs "Agents" onto as many computers on thenetwork as the user desires. Each of these Agents uses brute force to try to recoverthe lost password. The program ensures that these Agents work together, and combinetheir computing power to find the lost password. The more computing power available,the faster the recovery speed.
Another module of the program, the Console, is designed to manage the agents. Thissolution is best for big enterprisers with thousands of clients when employees leavewithout un-protecting their mission-critical documents.
According to Elcomsoft, the program restores passwords for Word and Excel documentsencrypted with 40 bit keys (Office 97/2000 compatible) as well as more recentdocuments (Office XP/2003) encrypted with CSP. Office 97/2000 documents can be alsodecrypted by recovery of encryption keys instead of password, and that type ofattack gives a guaranteed result regardless of password length and complexity.
Distributed Password Recovery can be easily installed in enterprises networks withthousands of computers and needs little traffic. The agents work in the backgroundwithout harming other programs. That is, they use the CPU only when it is in itsidle state. An administrator can get a report about the work that is done. When apassword is restored or a document is decrypted, the program informs theadministrator by e-mail, and starts processing the next task. Using the Console, anadministrator can also keep statistics.
The software has a plug-in architecture and can be easily extended to support moredocument formats and types of encryption. Future releases will support Adobe AcrobatPDF files, ZIP and RAR archives, and more.
Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery v. 1.1 runs under Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003and requires 4 MB of hard disk space on the server and 2 MB on every client. Pricesbegin at $599(US) for networks with up to 20 clients/agents. For more informationand a free trial version of Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery, please visithttp://edpr.elcomsoft.co m
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Evaluation Copy Available on Request
About ElcomSoft Co. Ltd.
Since 1990, ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. has been developing and marketing password recovery,forensics, and security software for Windows. In addition to Distributed PasswordRecovery, the company also offers a comprehensive line of password recovery andpassword auditing software for popular Microsoft, Lotus, Corel and Adobe software,as well as dozens of popular email clients, compression programs, instant messengerapplications, and other applications.
ElcomSoft is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. ElcomSoft's tools are used by mostof the Fortune 500 corporations, many branches of the military worldwide,international governments, all major accounting companies, and firms andinstitutions of all sizes.
