<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  System and Data Recovery Programs > Proactive System Password Recovery > Working with PSPR > Recover PWL > Bruteforce attack

If you have completed a dictionary attack, but the password has not been recovered, you will have to use the brute-force attack. In this attack, the program tries to guess the password by trying every combination of characters until the password is found.

 

The brute force attack is the slowest method of password attack, but can often be successful on short and simple passwords.

 

Select the full path to your PWL file, as well as login name. The other options follow:

 

Character set

 

Instructs the program about the characters used in the password. You can choose from all capital letters, all capital OEM letters (according to current code page), all digits, all special symbols and space. The special characters are:

 

 !@#$%^&*()_+-=<>,./?[]{}~:;`'|"\

 

Start from and End at

 

When you start the brute-force attack, these fields should be either empty or selected according to the desired minimum and maximum password length. It is NOT recommended that you edit these fields manually: instead, use the >  buttons to select the length, and they will be filled automatically.  This minimizes the chances that some combinations could be skipped.

 

CPU type

 

Select from Intel PII/PIII/Celeron and AMD Athlon, depending on your processor.

 

Finally, press Start to run the attack. Once the password is found, PSPR will decrypt the PWL file and display information. During the attack, the current password and recovery speed is shown.