How to crack archive password

I have recovered old backup only to learn that I do not remember password to the found archive. As a result, I checked out two command-line applications to crack passwords used to encrypt zip, 7z or rar archives.

FCrackZip

FCrackZip by Marc Lehmann is a free and fast zip and 7-zip password cracker.

Installation

Install application using the following command.

$ sudo apt-get install fcrackzip

Usage

Crack password using dictionary stored in pwddict file, verify and print it.

$ fcrackzip -D -p pwddict -u archive.zip

Crack at least four characters long password using brute force, which is default mode, verify and print it.

$ fcrackzip -l4 -u archive.zip

Crack two to nine characters long password containing only lowercase characters and digits, verify and print it.

$ fcrackzip -l2-9 -c a1 -u archive.zip

Crack five characters long password starting from aswaq, display progress, verify and print found solution.

$ fcrackzip -p aswaq -u -v archive.zip

Notes

This application is currently not longer maintained, but you can find forked and slightly updated source code at github.

Please read manual page as it is provided within package.

$ man fcrackzip

RarCrack

RarCrack by David Zoltan Kedves is a
simple brute force zip, 7-zip and rar password cracker.

Installation

Install application using the following command.

$ sudo apt-get install rarcrack

Usage

Crack password to rar archive.

$ rarcrack --type rar archive.rar

Crack password to zip archive using four threads.

$ rarcrack --type zip --threads 4 archive.rar

Notes

This application does not provide manual page, but its usage is dead simple.

$ rarcrack --help
RarCrack! 0.2 by David Zoltan Kedves (kedazo@gmail.com)
Usage:   rarcrack encrypted_archive.ext [--threads NUM] [--type rar|zip|7z]
Options: --help: show this screen.
         --type: you can specify the archive program, this needed when
                 the program couldn't detect the proper file type
         --threads: you can specify how many threads
                    will be run, maximum 12 (default: 2)
Info:    This program supports only RAR, ZIP and 7Z encrypted archives.
         RarCrack! usually detects the archive type.

Use wheezy-backports repository in case you need package for wheezy.

Please notice that this application is not longer maintained.

Additional notes

Your are not limited to above-mentioned applications as you can use more specialized solutions like PkCrack which uses a known plain-text attack.