The zip file "password" is actually a key used to encrypt the data, and thus cracking time is limitted more or less by the length of the key. Anything over six letters will take quite a while on even the fastest CPU.
Maybe a challenge for Team Anandtech? 😉
The most innovative approach I've seen to cracking ZIP file encryption was a program that used a "known plaintext attack". I could never get it to work, but the principle is sound: simply give the cracking software a sufficiently long string of data known to be in the unencrypted file (ie. a common file header or some text from a document) and it will use that to significantly reduce the time needed to evaluate each possible key.
The dictionary attacks are good, too, because the number of words in an English dictionary is quite small relative to the number of words that can be built out of eight letters. The problem, of course, is that many passwords are letter-number combinations or nonsense words. But some dictionary attack programs are smart and will stick words together in weird combinations.
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