Howto: Crack Rar, 7z, and zip files with RarCrack in Ubuntu Linux

Ever run into the problem where you created a password protected zip/rar file and you forgot the password or accidentally deleted it? Or just dont know the password at all? Well I have come across a nice solution for cracking zip/rar files. Its called rarcrack, If you forget your password for compressed archive (rar, 7z, zip), this program is the solution.
This program uses bruteforce algorithm to find correct password. You can specify which characters will be used in password generations.


Download RarCrack
wget http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/rarcrack/rarcrack-0.2.tar.bz2
Install RarCrack
tar xvjf rarcrack-0.2.tar.bz2
cd rarcrack-0.2
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
make ; sudo make install
Using RarCrack:

rarcrack your_encrypted_archive.ext [--threads thread_num] [--type rar|zip|7z]
Everything in [] are optional, rarcrack default crack two threads and autodetect the archive type. If the detection wrong you can specify the correct file type with the type parameter. RarCrack currently crack maximum in 12 threads.

After the cracking started RarCrack will print the current status of cracking and save it's to a status file. If you want more specific password character set, you need to run RarCrack to create the XML status file (3 sec).

There will be a sample XML file, and you see there is a character set. If you want, you can modify this file and when you start RarCrack again the program will be use new variables.
Warning: Take care when you changing this file, make sure the current password don't have characters outside the abc[character set]!

Know of any other rar/zip/7z cracking tools worth mentioning?


More information on rarcrack can be found here

Comments (30)

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It looks like lifehacker.com gave me some props for this here:
<a href="http://lifehacker.com/380365/rarcrack-opens-protected-archives-without-passwords
Thanks! ">http://lifehacker.com/380365/rarcrack-opens-protected-archives-without-passwords
Thanks!
For some reason whenever I get to the compilation step, I get all sorts of errors. Do I not have the correct libraries?
1 reply · active 882 weeks ago
me too
do sudo chown youruser:youruser boo.zip and then sudo chmod 755 boo.zip to fix the permissions
Thank You for your post, it was very useful!

Cheers!
For anyone still having trouble it seems the program doesn't like white space in th file name, even when followed by a backslash. Remove the spaces and it works!
when i try to crack a pasword my machine starts running but rarcracks says [0 pwds/sek] all the time... ?!?! any ideas?
mine says 0 pwds/second as well.
1 reply · active 853 weeks ago
@sadpanda:

mine too. (it's been doing it for 5 hours now)
Nice App! Works perfect for me averaging around 1000 pwds/sec.
what does it mean when it says, "Segmentation Fault"?
@Jacques: Try by rename your rar file as MS DOS file name format (i.e: xxxx.rar).
for the people who had errors in making it, this is what i encountered thanks to the instructions being less than clear on what steps to follow.

after you unpack it, cd to the directory you just created and then type "sudo make" .. thats it. once you have the make file, THEN type "sudo make install" ... you need to make the installer first. from there the steps are the same.
Josh, again's avatar

Josh, again · 863 weeks ago

or just type the full string as well.... "make ; sudo make install" dont forget your semicolon.... im cracking my archives at around 3000 pwds/sec, but then again i am using a quadcore with 4GB of memory, so....you know.... lol
I also had 0pwdsec and replaced the unrar non-free by the free version as per http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=...
Nice program!
App works great with my c2d 7500 at ~ 1300 pwd/sec but i have another trouble.
I need rarcrack to search for a keyphrase with windows-1253 or iso-8859-7 encoding. guess what, just writing the character set in the <abc> line, correcting the endoding value and saving the .xml with the correct charset has no influence. rarcrack immediately changes the endoding value written in the .xml back to utf-8.
Any thoughts? Is it a limitation of the application or is there something i don't get?
Thanks for reading
Post your success stories!

1. password complexity
2. length of time
3. your hardware
@Phil : Thanks for the tip.
Using the free version of unrar instead of the non-free : from 0pwd/sec to ~1100pwd/sec
It apparently cracked the password of my rar file in 20mins (CPU 2.66G, mem: 512M), but when I enter this password for rar it says: Encrypted file: CRC failed in ********.rar_ (password incorrect ?)
No files to extract

???
it was supossed to crack the password, in a xml file but the password doesn't work
Using free version of unrar has none effect for my case.
I crack the test.rar at ~35pwds/sec and when i want to crack my own .rar file, ration fall to 0pwd/sec.

I have done below :
$ sudo apt-get remove unrar-nonfree
Shell tel me : unrar-nonfre is not installed so cant remove ....
But when I do bellow :
$ whereis unrar-nonfree
Shell respond :
unrar-nonfree: /usr/bin/unrar-nonfree /usr/share/man/man1/unrar-nonfree.1.gz

So I suspect that unrar-nonfree is wrongly removed.

Then, i did this :
$ sudo apt-get install unrar-free
without any effect ...
So i tried
$ sudo apt-get install unrar
(after removed unrar-free AND whitout removing it)
the rate of pwd/sec steading ...

Any suggestions ??

Sorry for my expression, I am French.
Please reply to me if you dont understand me.
1 reply · active 693 weeks ago
thanks a lot..

it's very useful to me :D

good luck 4 your work
Michael Curran's avatar

Michael Curran · 830 weeks ago

This is what my XML file looks like:

<rarcrack>

<abc>
0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
</abc>
<current>2</current>
<good_password>1</good_password>
</rarcrack>

What is the password I should try to use?
1 reply · active 825 weeks ago
Hello all !
If you experience slow performance with rarcrack, just replace the version of unrar-nonfree programe with unrar-free, it is avaialble in repositiries. I have removed unrar-nonfree package and installed unrar-free and the perforamnce increased from 12 pwd/sec do 1100 pwd/sec !!!

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