This key has a set number of randomly-generated bits. When you encrypt or decrypt data, you use an encryption key. Encrypted Data Recovery-No, Password Needed! No password needed? No, password needed!įor starters, let’s look at the situation. In other words, don’t count on a trip to Cygnus X-1 to be your gateway to a better universe.īut let’s walk through the steps that data recovery experts would have to take to recover encrypted data without a password, just for fun.

Plausible? Not in a billion years (and we mean that quite literally). (But you’re more likely to be torn apart in a process scientists like to call “spaghettification”-and while the name may suggest otherwise, it is not a delicious way to die at all.) And here we mean theoretically in the same sense that, according to all known laws of cosmology, diving head-first into a very specific type of black hole can theoretically plunge you into an alternate universe. To make a long story long, it is possible-but only theoretically.

To make a long story short, no, encrypted data recovery is impossible without the password. Is Encrypted Data Recovery Possible Without a Password? Recovering data from encrypted storage devices takes a few extra steps compared to recovering unencrypted data, but as long as we have access to our client’s proper credentials, the process usually goes fairly smoothly (although it can take a bit longer).īut as we’ll explain in this encrypted data recovery case study, data recovery is only really feasible when we know the password to decrypt the data. We deal with everything from SmartWare and FileVault encryption to PGP and EFS encryption. The user wanted to know if we could perform encrypted data recovery without knowing the password to the device.Īt Gillware, we deal with encrypted data recovery cases all the time. Furthermore, the device had a protection against “brute-force” guessing the password-10 incorrect password entries would completely wipe the device, erasing all of its contents. However, the data was inaccessible because the device was password-protected with 256-bit AES encryption-and the user had forgotten the password.

The USB flash drive itself was in perfect condition. Recently, a potential client contacted us, wondering if we could recover data from their Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3.0 USB drive. 4.1 Forgot Your Password? Here’s the Best Encrypted Data Recovery Method

Aegis padlock