Password Recovery Software

Windows Password Recovery - dictionary attack

In contrast with a brute-force attack, where all possibilities are searched through exhaustively, a dictionary attack only tries possibilities which are most likely to succeed, typically derived from a wordlist or a dictionary. Generally, dictionary attacks succeed because many people have a tendency to choose passwords which are short, single words in a dictionary, or are simple variations that are easy to predict.

On the Dictionaries tab, set up the list of dictionaries to be used in the attack. Supported are plain-text dictionaries in the formats ASCII, UNICODE and UTF8, as well as encrypted/compressed dictionaries in the native PCD format, developed in Passcape Software. ZIP and RAR packed wordlist are supported as well with some restrictions. To deactivate a dictionary, simply clear the checkbox by its name. In this case, the dictionary, although it remains on the list, will be skipped during an attack. The software comes with a 360000-word dictionary. For the complete list of dictionaries, check out our wordlist collection, please. Or you can use our Online dictionaries as an alternative.

The Filters tab filters the words from a dictionary by the include/exclude principle. If the first, inclusive, filter is enabled, the attack will accept only the words that contain at least one of the characters entered in the filter. If the second, exclusive, filter is set, the program will skip the words that contain at least one of the entered characters.

You can use Dictionary Generator to create your own wordlists based on options of the first three tabs.

The Mutation tab allows setting all kinds of possible combinations of the words to be searched. For example, if you set a strong mutation, the program will create several hundreds of analogs for each word from the dictionary. For example, secret - Secret - s3cr3t - secret123, and so on. You can set up to three mutation rules: Weak - less number of mutations and, in its turn, greater verification speed; Strong - for a greater number of mutations, to the prejudice of the speed, and the happy medium, Default option.
 

Customizing mutations

Starting with version 4.0, the program has the ability to customize the smart mutation of the Dictionary attack. All mutation rules are clustered into 16 primary groups. You can set one of three mutation levels or disable mutation separately for each group.


For example, you can turn off OEM mutation (and thus double your Dictionary attack speed) if you sure the password you're looking for contains Latin characters only. A simple description of what all these mutation groups mean is given below: