OpenOffice Writer Password Recovery Editor's Review

Let's assume that you create a document using OpenOffice Writer. You password protects it so that nobody, except you, can read it. However, when you try to open it, you realize that you've forgotten the password. This is where 'OpenOffice Writer Password Recovery' kicks in. It uses various password recovery techniques to find your lost password including dictionary search and brute force.

If you remember the number of letters you used, you can discover your password faster. When you enter a part of the password, recovery time significantly decreases. It's possible to define a word mask, which will be used to find your password. 'OpenOffice Writer Password Recovery' is able to test an average of 1200 passwords per second on my computer (Intel P4 2.7 Ghz, 2GB RAM). This speed depends on the password's complexity.

After starting the program, you open a protected document. Then the application displays a wizard, which helps you define the password's length and mask. The mask is a representation of your password using wildcards. For example, if your password is "soft32", you could define a mask like "sof*". The wildcard (asterisk) is replaced by any characters or sequences of characters. You can customize the software to search by using only dictionaries. This means that it tries words like "software", "softball", and so on. If your password is longer than five characters and you don't remember anything about it, chances are you won't be able to recover it.

Please note that the demo version of this software is only able to recover three letter passwords. However, when you register this software, the passwords you recovered are displayed in full.

Pluses: The password recovery process is highly customizable. If you take the time to create your own "attack (recovery) profile" and you remember some details about the password, you can recover it much faster. The best thing about 'OpenOffice Writer Password Recovery' is that it can suspend and resume the password recovery process.

Drawbacks / flaws:

In conclusion: This software has a great user interface. Recovering your password may take a while, but I guess you can always leave your computer on overnight.

version reviewed: 1.0.6