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Say you have a cryptographically random 8 character long alphanumeric password (A-Z, a-z, 0-9) used to encrypt a ZIP file with AES-128.

Can this program:

http://www.openwall.com/passwords/zip-winzip-archives

Really crack it in a feasible amount of time?

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Please don't doublepost :/ – Tie-fighter Jul 2 '12 at 23:28
Sorry. I guess this is kinda close to my other question. I was specifically wondering if there was anything "special" about this program. But as was answered, brute force is still brute force. – John Jul 3 '12 at 0:31

1 Answer

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If you have a random generated password, without a meaning (no words), then there is no way to do a successful dictionary attack.

Now with your character sets, you have 2,18340106 × 10^14, thats loads. It would take a very long time to crack based on bruteforce.

Now this tool simply tries to attack the algorithm by using a dictionary attack. It hopes that the password is a common word or a deriative (some dictionaries will contain b00k too).

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Ok, good. I got a little worried there that maybe something about ZIP files made them weaker or something or that an alphanumeric 8 character password wasn't good enough. Thanks for clearing that up. – John Jul 3 '12 at 0:26

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