Removal of a password from an encrypted zip
file can be easy or hard depending on the complexity of the password. Using a tool such as John the Ripper you can break out the password by matching the computed hash at a rate of millions of attempts per second. So a strong password should be used to ensure security of the file.
Try our free on-line password recovery tool below to quickly check a password protected zip file for a weak password.
Digging into Zip file Password Removal
John the Ripper (a password recovery program) comes with a utility called zip2john
that is used to extract the encrypted hash from the file. This hash is the key to the file. When attacking the file in an effort to “crack” the password you use this hash to try and find a matching known string.
By attacking the hash it saves you having to type passwords into zip file password prompt millions of times, so getting the hash out is a good thing! As is the two most common password cracking tools, that being the aforementioned John the Ripper and Hashcat (also cudaHashcat). These are open source tools that are the worlds best at cracking password protected files and application hashes.