[thelist] Need to crack my own zip password

[Ryan Tames]

On 12 Dec 2003 at 23:04, Tim Luoma wrote:

I'll give you a few hints:

-- any zip password deleter will work. Why? Becouse its always
in the same place in a file. The only thing you need to do to remove
the password protection, is either change a value in the file, or,
delete the string.

-- If your storing confidental information, always, always, always use
encryption software such as PGP. If that information is really really
confidental, never let any of it even touch a hard drive (even though you
may think it was deleted; Really the magnetic representation of the 
information, is still there - sure to read it, you need powerful expensive 
equipment, but still).

-- to obscure the information enough to be classified as unreadable,
you need to over write the area on the hard disk an odd number of times,
that range in the millions. And that , _needs_ to be with random bits.

I could go on, but I am unsure about the explicited details. I think
it has to do either with:

1) Magentic fields and frequencies layering on top of each other.
2) Magentic fields and frequencies not being written in the exact locations.
3) Magentic fields and frequencies mixing, kinda like audio.

or maybe alittle bit of all the above.

> I've just deleted a significant portion of a website that I haven't
> worked on for a long time.
> 
> My backups are in a zip file that I put a password on (it was a zip of
> my entire "My Documents" and included confidential materials).
> 
> Of course the password is several years old now, and I don't remember
> it.  I've tried all the usual suspects and none of them work.
> 
> Does anyone know of a good (realllly preferably free, since I'll just
> use it once) crack for zip files?  The problem is that I usually pick
> rather strong passwords (8 characters, letters, numbers, and
> punctuation).
> 
> The file is 461mb, so I can't send it anywhere, and I'd rather unzip
> it myself, since it still contains NDA'd materials (albeit a few years
> old).
> 
> Thoughts appreciated.
> 
> TjL
> 
> <tip title="Backups" author="Timothy J. Luoma"> 
> 
> Backup drives are cheap these days.  Grab yourself a Firewire drive
> and backup your entire drive.  It's easy (meaning you are more likely
> to do it).  And DON'T put your backups in a compressed file, because
> if that one file is corrupted, everything can be lost.
> 
> And don't password protect it without making sure that at least one
> other person knows the password.  Store it somewhere safe instead.
> </tip>
> 
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