A recent thread about brute-force password cracking reminded me about something. I had a file that I winrar’d and used password protection on it (I had my PC on a network at the time). Well, you can of probably tell where this thread is going…
I forgot the password. At one time in the recent past, I download a demo crack program from the net and I eventually gave up on it… I think I let it run for about 4 hours or so. I think its about a 7 or 8 digit password but be damned if I can remember for sure. I do know it was not a random “word” or anything that I usually use it was just some crap I came up with at the time like 789kf24a2 (for example).
Is this file destined to be forever lost or does someone have a clue how I can recover it?
Four hours for a brute force crack of a 7-8 digit alphanumeric password is just the prelude. If you really really want the password cracked, the time frame that you’re looking at is measured in days and probably weeks, depending on how fast your computer is.
It might be quicker (and more educational) to research how a password is encrypted in a .rar file, and then perhaps hex-hack your password-protected file.
Yeah, I knew it would definetly take a lot of time with the brute-force approach. I was hoping there might be a better way. I’ll investigate your suggestion when I feel ambitious!
It’s possible to speed things up if you use a comprehensive dictionary list, assuming you used actual words in your password instead of a jumble a characters.
I once had to break a zip file which I had forgotten most of the password, except for the fact I was sure it was something like “integer321”. I used a nice program called “Advanced Archive Password Recovery” and a dictionary list I downloaded (a 12-meg txt file!) to get it back. Took maybe 3 hours to do.