RAR Password Cracker 4.12

RAR Password Cracker is one of the many tools able to crack RAR archive passwords. However, I liked it better than other tools because it's easy to use and has useful features. It supports two operation modes. It uses either brute force to crack your password, or the dictionary method. The program can estimate the time it takes to crack a specific password. This is nice because you can see if cracking that specific password is worth your time.

Cracking a three letter word, composed of numbers and lowercase letters took about half an hour on my computer (Athlon64 3000+ processor) when I used brute force. When you use the dictionary method to crack a password, the duration depends on the size of the dictionary. The dictionary files (word lists) are not included in the installation, but they can be purchased separately using a link on the publisher's website. These files are in fact text files, so you can create your own if you want.

The program displays a current performance rate. I guess this performance rate should be the number of words tried each second. I'm not sure though because I couldn't find what the "p/s" symbol (displayed next to the performance rate) stands for.

Pluses: If you close the application while it's cracking a password you can pick up later where you left off. Resuming is possible because the program saves a project file, which contains information about the progress of the cracking process. I also liked that I could set any project to resume its work automatically upon the next Windows startup.

Drawbacks / flaws:

In conclusion: A good tool for cracking or recovering a RAR/WinRAR archive password.

version reviewed: 4.12