Recover forgotten User Id or Password
What can I do if I forgot my user id or password for signing into the encrypted Guarded Key database?
Is it possible to recover/reset user id and password or restore my data into a new database?
No. It is impossible to recover user id and password or access data in the database without knowing exact user id and password or encryption key.
Since the database is protected by 4096-bit encryption key, it is not possible to decipher the database in reasonable amount of time.
Not even the author of this application, who knows the code inside-out, can hack into the database.
4 character password using alphanumeric characters and special characters (punctuation marks) would take 6.6 days to find, 5 character password 1.5 years.
Smart users like yourself use 8 characters or more and breaking such password is beyond capabilities of even a large network of computers as we can see from the following table:
Time needed to break into the database
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Password length
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Personal computer with Intel Core 2 Duo processor
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Supercomputer system 100000x faster than personal computer
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All personal computers in the world
(10 billion computers)
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6 characters
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137 years
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12.0 hours
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0.434 seconds
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8 characters
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1040752 years
(approx. 1 million years)
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10.4 years
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54.7 minutes
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10 characters
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7877454788 years
(approx. 8 billion years)
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78775 years
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288 days
(approx. 9.5 months)
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12 characters
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59624455289668 years
(approx. 59624 billion years)
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596244553 years
(approx. 596 million years)
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5962 years
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Table is valid for 4096-bit key and 8 layers of encryption - Guarded Key application
Remember your User Id and Password! This is the only thing you really need to remember.
If you think you might forget your user id and password in the future, you can do the following:
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Change password of the administrator (username and password you used to initialize the database) - use at least 20 characters.
Split your password to 2 or more parts and write down each part on a separate piece of paper.
Hide first part somewhere in your house where only you can find it (use safe for example), store second part in a bank vault or give it to your laywer or
somebody who you can trust and who would verify your identity before giving it back to you.
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Add new user into the database (you can use the same name as in step 1 and use password of standard length (recommended 8 - 12 characters) and remember it.
This is the password that you will be using on daily basis.
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If you forget your password you can always recover the pieces of administrator password created in step 1.
You use this password to sign into the database and then open menu Tools > Edit List of Users and Computers
You will be promped for username and password. Use administrator's credentials and sign in.
The application will show a dialog with list of users and computers.
Here you can remove the record which represents your forgotten password. Save changes.
Finally you can add new user id and password. This time remember it!
Copyright (C) 2011-2016 Robert Janik, Brno, Czech Republic
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