ElcomSoft Adv. Archive Password Recovery vs LastActivityView: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

ElcomSoft Adv. Archive Password Recovery

Forensic investigators and incident responders who need to recover passwords from encrypted archives should pick ElcomSoft Adv. Archive Password Recovery for its speed on legacy encryption; the Pro Edition cracks WinZip 8.0 and earlier within roughly one hour, which matters when you're working against the clock in active investigations. The tool supports ZIP, 7Zip, RAR, and ARJ formats with multiple attack vectors including known-plaintext and dictionary methods, mapping directly to NIST RS.AN incident analysis workflows. Skip this if your team primarily handles modern AES-encrypted archives or needs broader forensic capabilities beyond password recovery; ElcomSoft is deliberately narrow.

LastActivityView

Incident responders and forensic analysts working Windows environments will get immediate value from LastActivityView for timeline reconstruction during active investigations; it pulls user logons, process execution, file access, and registry changes into a single sortable view that cuts hours off manual event log parsing. The tool is free and requires no installation or agent, meaning you can run it on compromised systems without leaving forensic footprints or touching your EDR licensing. Skip this if you need continuous monitoring or alerting; LastActivityView is a forensic scraper, not a detection engine, and it only surfaces activity after the fact.