Help for recovering zipped file password.

[MX2]

I was doing some cleaning and maintenance on one of my older PC's and I came across a file of zipped photos and I cannot for the life of me remember the password.

Any way I can recover the password or retrieve the photos?

Thanks guys

 

[Nothinman]

It depends on what you used to encrypt the file, most these days use AES which will take you centuries to brute force unless you used a really crappy password.

 

[Tarrant64]

Brute force or dictionary attack could be used. Time consuming. The more you know about the password the closer you'll get to finding out what it is.

There are some software solutions out there, but I am not sure how reliable they are. Or how much.

 

[elcamino74ss]

The stuff that works nice isn't cheap. The tool I have here was around 500-600 but works on most apps

 

[Nothinman]

The expense is irrelevant, if the ZIP file using AES encryption and the password isn't a simple alphanumeric passphrase that you can dictionary attack no software will be able to bruteforce it any faster than another. At least not by a big enough difference to matter.

 

[Modelworks]

If you used a short password, then brute force will crack it in a few hours at most.

I usually use 64 character passwords mixed with numerals, punctuation, upper and lower case. Keep the password stored on a memory card.
That would take a very long time to crack.