File password needed – I never set one though. Please Help!!!

[Sugs]

Hi,

I used a couple days ago AxCrypt to encrypt some .txt documents and everything worked nice.

Today I logged in to AxCrypt and then all of the sudden it asks me for a file password, which I never used one.

I only had set one main password nothing more.

Now I’m locked outside of all my important files with passwords etc. etc.

Is there a way to set this right???

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Sugs,

Not sure I understand. You say you used “AxCrypt to encrypt some .txt documents”. If you did that with AxCrypt version 1, and then upgraded to AxCrypt 2 – you just enter the original password.

From our logs there seems to have been some confusion. You created an account, reset the password for the account, changed the password for an account, created a new account and finally recreated the original account. Also, you’re using an outdated version of AxCrypt 2, please download and use the most recent version from our official download page.

It’s a little hard to really say for us exactly the sequence of events – but what you need to do is to remenber the password you used when you first encrypted the .txt files. That’s the password that AxCrypt is asking for the file.

[Sugs]

Hello again,

I’ve had some trouble replying to your last post this past week, but I did open a support request under this email I’m contacting you here with all the details from the start to end of my problem.

Since no one contacted me through email yet, is it possible for you to check it and tell me if what we facing is solvable???

Thanks a lot.

[Napoleon]

I’m an AxCrypt user and I doubt their support staff will be working over Christmas so I’ll try and answer your question.

I can tell you of two things to do which may help you recover your files:

• Did you originally encrypt it with AxCrypt v1.7?
  • If so, type in that password.

• Now you’re using AxCrypt 2 (I assume) you’ll have been asked for another password
  • Give that one a try, if the other password that you originally used doesn’t work.

• If you’ve forgotten your password then there’s no way  to decrypt your files.
  • It’d defeat the whole purpose of encryption if this was possible.

[Sugs]

Hello Napoleon,

It’s happened like you said. I had 1.7 encrypted a bunch of files and then close it.

I opened it  up and then got asked to update to version 2.1.1481.0 so I thought “Why not?” and then after the update I was asked for a password.

I entered the password that I had set from before, only one main password, and then I got logged in.

After that all the files keep asking me for a “File password” that I never set.

The password that I did set it was good enough to get me in to AxCrypt only, I tried it as a “File password” and didn’t work.

It was a sentence with three or four numbers and special characters in the end and after a few days now I can’t remember the order

Can I crack it somehow with brute force???

Thanks a lot for the help man!!!

[Napoleon]

Sugs, I’m still not entirely sure I understand what has happened but like me put a couple of suggestions forward which should answer your question:

• You installed AxCrypt 2 and are now being promoted for the file password for the original
  • I understand AxCrypt 2 will decrypt AxCrypt 1.7 files [but not the other way around]
    • Therefore enter your AxCrypt 1.7 password to decrypt your original file

• The alternative is to try uninstalling AxCrypt 2, reinstall AxCrypt 1.7, decrypt your file using your password and then reinstall AxCrypt 2 (if you’re happy with the new version).
  • Give it a try as there’s nothing to lose however version 2 is supposed to decrypt files encrypted with version 1.7

• If both those options fail then either the file has become corrupted (very unlikely unless you get a HMAC error message) or you’ve forgotten your password (much more likely).
  • In the case of a forgotten password I refer you to the FAQ*

• Let me know how you get on after trying option 1 and option 2.

 

*”The basic rule is: If you lose or forget your password or key-file, your documents are lost. There is no back-door into AxCrypt.

The only way to recover a lost password is to try all likely combinations.

All that being said, there is a special case where we could possibly help you. If you think you know your password, but not quite, or if it’s less than 5 characters long – then we can write and adapt a special program that will try many combinations automatically. This is called a brute force attack.

AxCrypt is specifically engineered to counter brute force attacks, and does it rather well, so this will only work when the number of combinations to try is very small, let’s say less than a million.

If you think you may be in a position where you can narrow down the possible combinations enough for us, then there is a slight chance to recover the password.

A brute force attack requires custom programming and many hours, days and possibly weeks and months of computer time, thus we will only do this when we feel that that it might be possible.”

[Napoleon]

A brute force attack may work quite quickly Sugs (even if your password is over 5 characters long) providing you remember all of the words in the sentence but have just jumbled them up.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Sugs (& Napoleon),

The problem seems indeed to be a case of a forgotten password. There’s no need to downgrade to 1.7 to try decryption there, version 2 will open old files too.

As Napoleon says, if you can narrow down the possibilities, a brute force attack may work. In fact, you may perhaps try it manually – just open notepad or excel and then systematically type all the variants you think likely and then try them one after another.

There are no limits in AxCrypt to how many times you can try a ‘File Password’. The sign in prompt, which interacts with the server if you’re connect to the Internet, does have a limit.

[Sugs]

Is there any of the already available programs able to do that for me?

Like put the main phrase and the rest of numbers and characters and do it itself??

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi Sugs,

We can send you a program that handles some situations. The problem is that it’s really hard to write a general purpose software that can interpret instructions like “a sentence with three or four numbers and special characters in the end“.

The software we have can do it to a certain degree, but it’s not entirely simple to use. We cannot give much support either, so what you should do is to encrypt a new file with a known password, and then try the brute force software out with a suitable pattern and verify that you understand the operation, and that it does find the (known) password as expected.

Then you can do the real search. Be prepared for a long wait if there are many possible combinations to try.

Please send an email to support@axcrypt.net and we can arrange for you to receive the software.

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