Restore the passphrase for my SSL certificate?

Question

I forgot the passphrase for my SSL certificate. Is there a way to recover the passphrase?

Answer 1

By "restore" I assume you mean "recover", and by "certificate" I assume you mean "private key", in which case, briefly: no. That's what happens when us ordinary mortals get hold of decent crypto; when we lose something, it stays lost.

At more length, it depends. Do you have some idea how bad a passphrase you picked, and by bad, I mean "insecure"? Was it a single dictionary word, or a simple variant thereof? There's some chance you could dictionary-attack your own keyfile if it was. If you used a full phrase, or a semi-random string, then I'm afraid waiting until quantum computing comes to the masses is probably the fastest way of recovering it.