2016-08-30 09:33:11 / Posted by Jose Henline to PDF Follow @ Jose

People from all walks of life prefer PDF, the most popular digitalized format, to store and circulate information. Putting security settings on the PDF files is always used to relieve their concerns on information safety.

We may work with numerous PDF every single day, it is much likely that we will fail to keep track of these PDF passwords and finally lose or forget them. There are indeed various programs declaring that being designed to remove or recover password, but do you really figure out which program you should turn to? Here, I wrote you some tips and experience on password recovery in a real sense.

First, learn the knowledge about PDF password(2 types).

User(Open) password: used to completely encrypt the PDF file and prevent it from opening.

Owner(Permission) password: used to restrict operations like printing, copying text and graphics out of the document, modifying the document, or adding or modifying text notes…

Now, let’s move on to discuss the tools to remove/recover the PDF password.

3 types of tools to unlock and recover your password-protected PDF

On general, there are 3 types of tools to get your protected PDF unlocked though they are in different name variants, like password remover/recovery, PDF unlocker/crack……

Type 1: Tool to remove owner password only(Remove restrictions like editing, printing, copying…)

It only works when the PDF is only restricted by owner password or there is a known user password and unknown owner password. Most of the online unlock tools (eg. PDFUnlock , Small PDF and other stand-alone app (PDF Key Pro) fall into this group.

How it works: Creating an equivalent, unlocked copy of your original protected file, cannot recover the owner password.

Suppose that you just want to enable your protected PDF to be edited, printed, copied, etc, in addition, there is no sensitive information contained in the file, the online unlock tools will a perfect.

Type 2: Tool to recover user password only.

There are quite few falls into this group, even most of them are only available for Windows version (eg. SmartKey PDF Password Recovery, Stellar Phoenix PDF Password Recovery)

How it works: Recovering user password but not showing the owner password, removing the restrictions by owner password.

It seems that tools which can only recover user password fail to grab our customers because there are other tools can retrieve both user password and user password at the same price, which sounds more attractive.

Type 3: Tool to remove all password protections and recover user password

Still, there are quite few programs designed to directly remove all PDF password protection or recover user password . The Cisdem PDF Password Remover leads the charge.

Cisdem PDF Password Remover is a stand-alone PDF password cracker, allowing users to unlock the PDF files and recover passwords without additional installation of plug-ins from time to time. No internet access is required to run this program, which makes your PDF files more secure and your work with PDF more efficient.

With its intuitive interface, you can directly remove the securities restricted by owner password, also recover your password, no matter it is user password or owner password, no matter how long and how complicated it is.

Following the steps below to unlock your PDF file:

Step 1: Download and launch the Cisdem PDF PasswordRemover on your Mac.

Free Download

Download the Free Trial of Cisdem PDFPasswordRemover Now!

Step 2: Import secured PDF files

Drag&Drop PDF files or directly add files as it instructs into the main interface.

Step 3:Once you have added the encrypted PDF into Cisdem PDFPasswordRemover, click "Remove", you will get an equivalent PDF without password, and the secured pdf is unlocked.

Useful Tip 1:

If there is a lock icon appearing on the right side with your PDF, it indicates your PDF is user password protected from opening. Click the lock icon, either enter the user password if you know or directly decrypt the password if you forgot it.

Useful Tip 2: Go to the settings as follows. You can check or fill in the above options like, password length, additional characters, etc. By doing so, you will save a lot of time to recover the lost PDF password.

Once your user password is decrypted, you can continue to unlock PDF by following previous steps.

How Does Cisdem PDF Password Remover Standard Work to Recover PDF Password?

Given the fact that the type of encryption determines which kind of tool is adequate for PDF password recovery, a little contextual knowledge of encryption will be needed as following:

Acrobat 6.0 And Later (PDF 1.5) encrypts the document using 128-bit RC4. Acrobat 7.0 And Later (PDF 1.6) encrypts the document using the AES encryption algorithm with a 128-bit key size. Acrobat X And Later (PDF 1.7) encrypts the document using 256-bit AES. To apply 256-bit AES encryption to documents created in Acrobat 8 and 9, select Acrobat X And Later.

Before trying some seemingly fascinating tools, figure out which encryption is added onto your protected PDF and check if that tool works to crack your PDF password. Just for your information, Cisdem PDF Password Remover Standard supports to decrypt RC4 40&128-bit, also AES 128&256-bit.

Three ways are adopted to recover your lost or forgotten PDF password:

Brute-force attack: It tries all possible combinations of passwords until the correct one is found. Being the most effective way to recover password 100% successfully. Mask attack: Works when you remember part of your password, you can set a mask for those parts you forget, it is significant to shorten the password recovery time. Dictionary attack: For the reason many PDF users use regular words or phrases to set encryption, the dictionary attack tries each word from the dictionary to save recovery time.

Extended Tips to Save Money and Effort on PDF Password Recovery