How to Recover Your RAR Password

RAR is an archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery and file spanning. It comes in three versions, RAR, RAR2 and RAR3 and has several filename extensions including .rar and .rev.  WinRAR software is used to write RAR3 files, it is only available for Microsoft Windows.

There are several available programs that can be used to recover a RAR password and two methods of attack.  The methods of attack are:

1. Brute-force attack which produces the list of passwords using by searching all possible combination of characters and checks them one-by-one.  The method is slow but highly reliable for password recovery. Brute-force attack can be used if the password is 5-8 characters; if longer, password recovery may result in months.
2. If the password is a known word (not names) the Dictionary (wordlist) attack method can be used. This method could speed up things to about 1/2 an hour.  Under the Dictionary attack all provided passwords are checked.

Some of the available RAR recovery programs are:

• Advanced RAR password recovery (ARPR) – software provided by Elcomsoft.com

• 1. ARPR has a multilingual interface which is also easy to use.
  2. It works with one file at a time, however multiple uses is possible.
  3. ARPR can work in the background using the PC when only when its idle

• Atomic RAR password recovery – software provided by Apasscracker.com

1. The wizard helps to find the password in a safe way
2. If interrupted you can restart the program at the last state
3. Recovers RAR/WinRAR passwords: 2.xx, 3.xx, self-extracting archives, multivolume archives, all compression methods.

• RAR password unlocker 3.0 – software provided by Smartcode.com

1. This software supports all RAR files using WinRAR.
2. Designed solely for RAR recovery.
3. Has the ability to recover long passwords at a speed of approximately 220,000 passwords per second.

• RAR Key – software available at Lostpassword.com

1. In addition to brute force and dictionary, RAR key also uses the Xieve method which actually boosts the brute-force attack speed by skipping password checks of nonsensical combinations of characters.
2. All versions of RAR are supported