Jump to content

HELP please - PGP whole disk encryption password forgot


Ecurb

Recommended Posts

Hi,

A good friend of mine has forgot her password for her whole disk encrypted laptop. The screen says something like "IBM PGP encryption" and it appears right at bootup. She has some ideas on what the password could be, but so far none of them have worked. She is almost sure it is 10 charters long, first six are letters and last four are numbers. Is there anything that can be done?

Thanks,

Bruce

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It helps to keep very long or complicated passwords stored somewhere safe.

As for unlocking your encrypted notebook, the only way you can access it without the password or key is by cracking it. :(

Edited by nvemb3r
Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK... slow down. Breathe a minute. Are ya calm? Good.

I have to ask the question I am sure everyone else is asking... "How does one lose their PGP encryption key?". Given the likely scenarios, the laptop in question was not owned (or at least, not setup), by your friend... but Elcomsoft has some nifty software. Sorry bud... I am washing my hands of this one... too fishy...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks for the replies so far. Well this is the situation. My friend and I work togther in IT and her past employer let her keep her work laptop after leaving but they had to reimage it so that no work data would leave the company. Anyway the image the company put on it had this encryption system that makes you reset the password every so many days. Recently she reset the password and simply can't remember what she set it to.

Please forgive im not very knowledgeable on IT security but the way I thought it could work is if you could get some software in before this encryption password screen, maybe via USB, then this cracking software could be configured to guss the password for you. Basically that is what we've been trying to do manually but it would be nice to let a program check all the basic combinations of what we think it could be.

Bruce

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd reinstall the machine and then restore the offline backups that she made of her important data. Can be done in a couple of hours rather than spending time worrying about cracking crypto.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...