Kraken

There's nothing much you can do if you forget the password to a RAR archive with important files or if you receive a locked archive and you can't access its contents. This is where Kraken comes in to be unleashed upon password-protected RAR archives. This lightweight utility is the closest thing you will see to a password cracker like those in the movies. It uses dictionary and brute-force attacks to determine the user password in your RAR archives. Though it may take some time, you will be able to crack open those locked archives.

The application is free for personal use, and it doesn't come with any kind of restrictions. Its components come in a RAR archive, which you only need to extract into a folder. You don't have to meet any special requirements, and you don't need powerful hardware to run it, though a good processor with adequate cooling will deliver better results.

Kraken doesn't have its own user interface, which is why you will see a command prompt on your screen when you launch the application. It places several options at your disposal, which you can select by typing their corresponding numbers and hitting the Enter key. There aren't too many options to go through, but if you still find yourself a bit confused, you can access an online Help document to figure out how the application works.

Before you run Kraken, you have to store a password-protected archive in the "Recovery" folder, located right where you've extracted the software's components. With the archive in its place, you can start a new cracking attempt, which can be one of two types. If you suspect that the password is an actual word, you can attempt a dictionary attack, which involves trying every single word from a given dictionary until it uses the correct one. However, the application doesn't come with any dictionaries, so you will have to get your own dictionary and store in a folder, just like the target archive.

If the used password is a series of random characters, you can attempt a brute-force attack, which takes longer to complete because the application will try every possible character combination one by one. If you're trying to break a password you've forgotten or, in any case, if you know something about it, you can use the knowledge you have to help the application finish faster. For example, you can specify if the password contains upper or lower-case characters, if it's all letters, numbers or combined and so on. You can also specify a minimum and maximum length, as well as a prefix and a suffix if you know them.

Regardless of which method you choose, you will see each word or character combination the application tries right in front of you. Before the process starts, the software will ask you to select a speed. Obviously, you will want a high speed, to finish faster, but a high speed will use more processing power. You should also note that the highest speed will make heavy use of the CPU, so you will hear its cooler spinning into overdrive. You will have to leave your computer running, because it will take some time to crack a password, especially through a brute-force attack, but the good news is that you can resume the process if you need to stop it and use the resources for something else.

If you can't open a password-protected archive, you can unleash the Kraken and break it open.