How to use Distributed Password Recovery

Below are the instructions on installing and running Passware Kit Agent for Windows.

The overall steps are:

• Download and install Passware Kit Agents on multiple computers
• Run Passware Kit on your computer (Passware Kit Server)
• Passware Kit Agents detect and connect to Passware Kit automatically, and password recovery tasks are divided among multiple computers

Installing Passware Kit Agents

Passware Kit Agent is available for download for both Windows and Linux systems, 64 bit. Please contact Customer Support or enter your Subscription for download links. 

For instructions on installing and running Passware Kit Agent on Linux, refer to the README file from the downloaded TAR archive. Agents can also be used on Amazon EC2.

Below are the instructions on installing and running Passware Kit Agent for Windows.

1. Run the Passware Kit Agent installation file to install Passware Kit Agent on node computers. Use the same installation file to install the Agents on multiple computers
2. You have the option to configure Passware Kit Agent to connect to a specific server. Launch Passware Kit Agent. The following screen appears:

At the Settings tab, you can choose between Auto discovery and Manual connection to Passware Kit. In the Auto discovery mode, Passware Kit Agent listens for Passware Kit broadcast message. For this mode UDP port 10777 should be opened on machine with Passware Kit and UDP port 10555 should be opened on machine with Passware Kit Agent. In the Manual connection mode, you can specify the name or IP address of the computer Passware Kit is running on. By default, the port is 10777, but it can be changed in Tools | Options | Hardware in Passware Kit and then mentioned in Passware Kit Agent, for example, as follows: 192.168.0.0:10789

3. At the Hardware tab you can choose which hardware you want to be used for attack contribution as shown below:

Now that you have installed Passware Kit Agent, you are ready to recover the password with Passware Kit.

Running Passware Kit and Recovering the Password

Once you have installed Passware Kit Agent, you are ready to recover the password by following these steps:

1. Launch Passware Kit on the server computer and select a file to process. In Tools|Options|Hardware make sure that Enable file distribution to Passware Kit Agents checkbox is enabled as below:
2. Choose one of the three options to specify password settings for your file. Password recovery process starts.
3. The Resources tab displays all the Passware Kit Agents detected over the network. You can see the status of each of the Agents in the Status column:
   
   

   Status "Running the current attack" means that this Passware Kit Agent is connected to Passware Kit and is running the current password recovery task. "Built-in" Agent is the main machine with Passware Forensic installed.

4. When the Passware Kit Agent is connected to Passware Kit, it's Settings tab displays the IP address and port of the Passware Kit Server, and the Performance tab displays a graph of resources usage:
   
   

   During the password recovery process, the status of the Agent is "Connected and busy..."

5. The detailed activity of the Passware Kit and Passware Kit Agents is displayed in the Log tab:
   

Passware Tip: additional Logs and Status reports on every Agent can be found on the Resources tab. You need to right-click on the Agent name and choose "Show details". Status Report is only available if the "Save detailed reports..." option is enabled in Tools|Options|Hardware menu. 

NOTE: You can adjust the GPU usage during the password recovery process for efficient performance of your computer by enabling the 'Disable GPU acceleration when the user is active' option from the Tools | Options… menu and using the GPU Utilization slider.

Your password is now being recovered using multiple computers efficiently!