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List:       gnupg-users
Subject:    Re: Passphrase
From:       David Shaw <dshaw () jabberwocky ! com>
Date:       2011-04-27 18:03:22
Message-ID: DC988FED-BFB2-48C2-8167-2798D11E3527 () jabberwocky ! com
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On Apr 26, 2011, at 6:38 PM, Stephen H. Dawson wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> 
> Dire need, hoping for help.
> 
> I have my private and public keys, but you have neither the passphrase nor a \
> revocation certificate.  I need to revoke my published key.  Can they recommend a \
> bash script to discover the passphrase using brute force on the private key?

It depends.  If you have a strong passphrase, you're pretty much out of luck.  After \
all, if it was easy to brute force a strong passphrase, it would defeat a lot of the \
point of the crypto here.

That said, frequently when someone forgets their passphrase, they half remember it.  \
They know it starts with such-and-such characters, or that it ends with a number, or \
has a hyphen in there... that sort of recollection.  For those cases, there are tools \
that might be useful to you, since your half memory of the passphrase reduces the \
search space that will need to be brute-force.  If you can manage to remember enough \
of the passphrase, you might be able to use a tool like \
http://www.roguedaemon.net/rephrase/ to brute force the missing parts.

There is also a commercial product from Elcomsoft that claims very fast distributed \
brute forcing.  I haven't tried it myself.  http://www.elcomsoft.com/edpr.html

David


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