I can't remember the password to a zip archive. How could I unzip it?
2007-01-29 08:06:45 · 3 answers · asked by golan 3 in Computers & Internet ➔ Security
oh my....I have a feeling you are asking something very different than what my mind went to when I read this...
2007-01-29 08:11:13 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The simple answer is you aren't, at least not easily, which is why you would password protect an archive anyway, isn;t it? There are programs out there which claim to "break" password protection, but do no more than a brute force attack. You can shorten the time if you know approxmately haw many characters were in the password, and skip the shorter combinations. The reason why only a brute force method may work is a thing called a "one-way algorithm" which is how the password is encoded and then stored in the file. Later, when the password is entered, it is encoded and then simply compared to see if the string is the same and if so, the archive can be decrypted. One way algorithms work because they only work one way. It is, so far, impossible to use the result to reverse-engineer and find the password.
2007-01-29 08:22:53 · answer #2 · answered by rowlfe 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Send it to me and I will hax0r it open for you.
rwolfe is correct in that one option is the brute force, however there are many shortcuts. My average time is 10 minutes, any length password.
2007-01-29 08:11:04 · answer #3 · answered by mdigitale 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋