Locked In or Locked Out? Unlocking ZIP, RAR, PDF, and Microsoft Office Passwords
July 29th, 2026 by Oleg Afonin
There is a whole industry selling software to protect data: full-disk encryption, rights management, key servers, the works. Almost none of it lives in an ordinary home or a two-person office. At home people protect a file the way the application in front of them allows. They type a password into WinRAR, or into Word, or into a PDF, and move on with the day. Here is the thing: none of those applications is a security product. WinRAR is a compression tool, Word is a word processor, Acrobat is a document viewer. They just happen to carry enough encryption to be used as a lock, and that is exactly why people use them. It is right there, it is free, and it needs no IT department.
Breaking Into iCloud: No Password Required
June 17th, 2014 by Vladimir Katalov
With little news on physical acquisition of the newer iPhones, we made every effort to explore the alternatives. One of the alternatives to physical acquisition is over-the-air acquisition from Apple iCloud, allowing investigators accessing cloud backups stored in the cloud. While this is old news (we learned to download data from iCloud more than two years ago), this time we have something completely different: access to iCloud backups without a password! The latest release of Phone Password Breaker is all about password-free acquisition of iCloud backups.
Phone Password Breaker with all-new UI, BlackBerry 10 support, and downloading Windows Phone 8 data from the cloud
May 8th, 2014 by Vladimir Katalov
This time, we are updating our bread-and-butter mobile forensic tool, Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, to version 3.0 (beta). This new version has many things that are new or have changed. Let’s see what’s new, and why.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About iTunes and iCloud Backups But Were Afraid to Ask
March 31st, 2014 by Vladimir Katalov
Do you think you know everything about creating and using backups of Apple iOS devices? Probably not. Our colleague and friend Vladimir Bezmaly (MVP Consumer security, Microsoft Security Trusted Advisor) shares some thoughts, tips and tricks on iTunes and iCloud backups.
Our Autumn Events Digest
November 6th, 2013 by Olga Koksharova
This fall has been quite rich in IT security events for ElcomSoft. We managed to visit a number of conferences and trade shows in order to, as we say in Russia, see the others and be seen 🙂
Forensic Day in Karlsruhe
September 27th, 2013 by Oleg Afonin
We’ve just returned from Karlsruhe, Germany from an event named FTDay. Hosted by mh-Service, a long-time ElcomSoft partner in Germany, this was a small but quality event. The first day was packed with sessions. The second day was dedicated to practical workshops.
