Assigning a password to protect a RAR archive from being opened is an easy way of having the contents of the archive blocked from being accessed by unauthorized persons. Unfortunately, these passwords can often be forgotten or lost even by the persons that assigned them in the first place. That's when RAR Password Recovery Professional comes to rescue.
RAR Password Recovery Professional can recover the passwords for RAR archives created using any version of the WinRAR application. It's in fact a password cracker that lets you choose to use one of the three available methods to retrieve the passwords: the dictionary-based attack method which can find and restore the password using a dictionary file and it's faster than the other two methods, the brute-force attack method that will attempt all character combinations in order to find the password, also taking the longest time and being suitable for situations when you have no idea of the password, and the brute-force with mask attack method that lets you set some specific data about the yet unknown password, such as some of the available characters or limits for its length. Since it's actually a password cracker, it can be used to unlock RAR archives who belong to others, but that's never a good idea, not only because it's illegal, but also because that will require using the simple brute force attack which can take even days to complete.
Unlike the previously reviewed version, the latest edition of RAR Password Recovery Professional actually works, even in its trial version, and it managed to correctly retrieve a short password that I assigned to a RAR archive for evaluation purposes. In conclusion, I'd say this time this tool is worth a try. Chances that it will actually truly help you recover a RAR password are this time quite decent.
Videos and screenshots
Review summary
Pros
- Supports three recovery methods
- Easy-to-use interface
- Contains a clear and comprehensive offline help file
Cons
- The recovery process takes very long, especially when using brute force attack
- The interface cannot be customized
