Programs To Remove Pdf Password

Creation programs for pdf files allow you to set two different security passwords for any files that you create. Setting the password for “owner” will encrypt the file so that only authorized persons can open it. By setting the “user restrictions” password, the file author can control what users can do with a file once it is open. The user can be prevented from changing a file, printing a file, or copying any file content to the system clipboard. Sometimes, though, a user may need to remove pdf password.

In case you’ve lost the password for an important document, there are several utilities available that can either crack or remove a pdf password. However, you may not always get the results that you want with them. You can download trial versions of some of these utilities if you wish to try them out. However, some of these demos are crippled, and will only decrypt part of a document. A common complaint on the forum for one of these programs is that it’s hard to prove that the program will do what the user needs to do when its functionality is crippled in this manner. (Also, if you do download any of these utilities, be sure to download from a reputable site, and virus-check the program before you install it.)

Here are a couple of pdf password utilities for Windows-based computers.

GuaPDF

GuaPDF is a budget-priced password-cracker program from a group that calls itself the “Russian Password Crackers”. Their website states that GuaPDF will delete the user restrictions password, even if 256-bit AES encryption has been used. However, it’s doubtful that you’d be able to use it to open any encrypted documents. It can only work with up to 40-bit encryption, while modern pdf creator programs will use 128-bit encryption by default. Attempting to open a file with 128-bit encryption will pop up an error-message box, which will direct you to the website for the Parallel Password Recovery program.

The free demo program is crippled, so you’ll only be able to use it for small files.

The Parallel Password Recovery Utility (PPR)

This utility has features that GuaPDF doesn’t have, but it can be a tad-bit more complex to use. (Thankfully, though, on-line help is there if you need it.) In addition to performing brute-force attacks, PPR can also perform dictionary and misspelled password attacks. You’ll need to hand-edit the password definitions file so that PPR will know which method to use, and which character set to use. Its ability to utilize GPUs and multi-core processors can increase processing speed. It’s designed to crack 256-bit owner passwords. There are several different versions, depending on your budget, and how many CPU cores that you’d like to utilize.

You’ll want to be aware, though, that you can only use PPR to crack the owner password. It can’t delete the password that sets restrictions on the user, and won’t even work with a file if no owner password has been set.

The demo program for PPR is fully functional, except that you can only use it to crack up to a five-character password, and it will only work on a local computer with up to four processor cores.