Reply To: File password needed – I never set one though. Please Help!!!

[Napoleon]

Sugs, I’m still not entirely sure I understand what has happened but like me put a couple of suggestions forward which should answer your question:

• You installed AxCrypt 2 and are now being promoted for the file password for the original
  • I understand AxCrypt 2 will decrypt AxCrypt 1.7 files [but not the other way around]
    • Therefore enter your AxCrypt 1.7 password to decrypt your original file

• The alternative is to try uninstalling AxCrypt 2, reinstall AxCrypt 1.7, decrypt your file using your password and then reinstall AxCrypt 2 (if you’re happy with the new version).
  • Give it a try as there’s nothing to lose however version 2 is supposed to decrypt files encrypted with version 1.7

• If both those options fail then either the file has become corrupted (very unlikely unless you get a HMAC error message) or you’ve forgotten your password (much more likely).
  • In the case of a forgotten password I refer you to the FAQ*

• Let me know how you get on after trying option 1 and option 2.

 

*”The basic rule is: If you lose or forget your password or key-file, your documents are lost. There is no back-door into AxCrypt.

The only way to recover a lost password is to try all likely combinations.

All that being said, there is a special case where we could possibly help you. If you think you know your password, but not quite, or if it’s less than 5 characters long – then we can write and adapt a special program that will try many combinations automatically. This is called a brute force attack.

AxCrypt is specifically engineered to counter brute force attacks, and does it rather well, so this will only work when the number of combinations to try is very small, let’s say less than a million.

If you think you may be in a position where you can narrow down the possible combinations enough for us, then there is a slight chance to recover the password.

A brute force attack requires custom programming and many hours, days and possibly weeks and months of computer time, thus we will only do this when we feel that that it might be possible.”