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Bad news, I lost my VeraCrypt password. (Yes, it was extremely stupid.) Good news I used a self-created formula to build the password. I do this because it makes the password long and complex, but easier for me to remember.

Well, it didn’t work like I had hoped. I ended up going an extended time without needing to use the password, and repeated use at the beginning helps me to remember it. (i.e. I spaced, and forgot to keep it up.)

Here’s what I have. I have 168 pieces of data that could have been used in the password. I narrowed it down to these, combining pieces so there wouldn’t be any repeating parts.

The password is between 22 and 38 characters. I give about a 90% chance I got all the parts. This would give about 14,196 possible choices. (If it chose all possible choices, which shouldn’t be needed with the limit on the size.) I am fairly certain I could do it by hand, but that would be immensely tedious, though I know I could dramatically reduce the number of choices.

While I would love to have this opened right now, I really don’t need to be in a rush. I can be patient. But I believe something automated should do this fairly quickly, even with how long it takes between passwords.

But at this point, I am confused as to what to do. I think setting up the password to be repeatedly tested would be the best option, but I wouldn’t know how to do that, or if there is a tool that would do that for me. I looked into HashCat, and am not sure it’s the right tool for this. Would the file be what I am supposed to supply?

I looked at the source text files for HashCat, and set up a text file with the same information. But I am not sure if it uses each choice once, or if it will build passwords, because that is what I would need.

I used dual encryption, figuring that was strong enough. I believe I know which one I used, if not it is most likely another one, and unlikely a third. I wouldn’t even know if HashCat works with double encryption.

If HashCat worked with the main file, 14K possible combinations shouldn’t really take that long if it isn’t encountering the pause.

So, any advice?

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  • I assume you already read: hashcat.net/wiki/… ?
    – Bakuriu
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 6:33
  • Any advice about what? This is a long story with lots of elements. What do you want to do?
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 8:22
  • I want to decrypt the file, and wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing that. Right now I am trying to figure out how to get the top 512 bytes of the file from the link Bakuriu sent. Sorry this was so long but I find if I am not specific people will spend time telling me to do things I already have done.
    – ChasteD
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 8:57
  • @ChasteD I don't get it, you seem to know the partial passphrase, but are you sure about the order of characters? That isn't clear. If you know 90% of the characters but you can't remember the order of the right ones, i doubt you could have reached a 14k number of attempts. If you think you could do it by hand, why don't you write a Python script to automate this? Sure, its not optimal, but its just 14k attempts. Even if it takes you 1 month, its still nothing.
    – Souza
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 12:47
  • security.stackexchange.com/questions/30605/…
    – shadowbq
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 14:59

1 Answer 1

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VeraCrypt has a command line option. You can build a script to run through a separate text file table containing all 14k options while testing VeraCrypt's reported results.

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