Recovering Passwords for Email Archives

The web interface allows to promptly recover passwords for protected archives with threats received by email users. Such archives are used by Dr.Web Mail Security Suite to store malicious and unwanted parts of a scanned email message, if the Pass (PASS) action is applied to the email message. Depending on the value of the RepackPassword configuration parameter, the archives can be:

not protected by a password (None);

protected by the same password specified by the parameter (Plain);

protected by unique passwords generated for each archive on the basis of a secret word and a unique email message identifier (HMAC).

The password recovery interface allows an administrator of an email system to recover (at the user request) a password for an archive protected using the HMAC method, if the user provided the unique email message identifier, and the administrator knows the secret word used for the password generation. By default, the secret word is a current secret word from the value of the RepackPassword parameter, if the HMAC mode is set.

If the password generation method has changed, the correct password decryption will require the secret word that was relevant at the moment of scanning the email message and generating the password for the protected archive with threats.

If the user email message does not have a unique identifier, this means that the password archive was generated using the Plain method, and the password recovery interface cannot recover the password.

Password Recovery

Recovering passwords for protected archives with threats is performed on the panel that is displayed when you choose the Password for attached archive with threats item on the main menu of the web interface. The activated panel is displayed in the bottom right corner of the web interface. The figure below shows what the password recovery panel looks like.

Figure 12. Panel for recovering passwords for email archives

To recover a password for an archive generated using the HMAC method, provide:

Message ID indicated by a recipient of an email message with a password-protected archive.

Secret word used in Dr.Web MailD settings at the moment of processing the email message. By default, if the HMAC method of password generation is indicated in the Dr.Web MailD settings, this field will be filled with the current secret word.

To recover the password for the archive, click Get password. The generated password will be displayed in the Password for the archive field.

To close the panel, click in the top right corner of the panel.