Member Avatar for marceta

Hello everyone. I just forgot a crucial .rar password for a project (didnt want my mates copying) and need to open the file. Is there a way of bypassing the password request, or finding it somehow?

thx in advance

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by manishsingh137

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Short primer and practical follow-up to the replies from , and — no secret backdoor exists in WinRAR: the password is used to derive the encryption key, and modern RAR formats deliberately slow down brute-force (RAR5 uses a slow PBKDF2-style verifier and stronger AES). That change makes long, mixed-character passwords much harder to crack than the simple trialware you tried. (win-rar.com)

A workable, no-trial toolchain that avoids artificial length limits is: extract the RAR hash with the John the Ripper helper and then attack that hash with John or GPU-accelerated Hashcat. Example workflow (run on a system with the tools installed): 

rar2john archive.rar > rar.hash
john --wordlist=rockyou.txt rar.hash

or, for Hashcat (pick the right mode after extracting the hash):

# RAR3-hp
hashcat -m 12500 rar.hash rockyou.txt
# RAR5
hashcat -m 13000 rar.hash rockyou.txt

rar2john and Hashcat are the standard route for this. (linuxcommandlibrary.com)

Practical strategy notes: brute-forcing every combination for a long, random 10+ character passphrase is generally infeasible — GPU acceleration helps a lot, but targeted attacks are far more effective. Start with context-based dictionaries (project names, colleagues, dates), use rules/mangling and masks (hybrid attacks) to cover likely variants, and only escalate to full brute force if the keyspace is small enough. Commercial tools and cloud GPU farms exist for this work but don’t remove the exponential cost of long random passwords. (hashcat.net)

Troubleshooting: confirm the RAR version and whether filenames/headers are encrypted (that affects which mode and inputs are needed), and if the archive is multipart feed the correct volume(s) to the extractor. If the password truly appears random, recovery may be impractical — check backups or any collaborator notes as the fastest route to regain access. (win-rar.com)

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Member Avatar for marceta

thanks, but i forgot to add that i already have a few of these programs and they all suck. For one the password is longer than 2-3 characters (the trial version) and these programs are soo slow that i am never going to buy them to crack my long password! Ne 1337 Cr4ck3rs out there know a backdoor in the code?

Member Avatar for alc6379

if it's so crucial, how much are these trial programs?

Really, programs like those are going to be your only option. The password is probably stored in an irreversible hash, similar to UNIX passwords. The only way then would be to take a password, hash it, then compare it to the password hash. If it matches, then you've got it. And that is a slow process...

Member Avatar for marceta

they arent really expensive, but for CAPS, no caps and $ymbols, and a 10 word password, one of them wont even attempt it "too long" in time. And the other gives a ludacris figure!!! Id rather pay a friend to "help" me than pay for these progs ;)

Member Avatar for amirmkd

use password cracker

Member Avatar for eeepcer

use password cracker

I wholly agree with you, is the right choice. It can recover lost or forgotten RAR/ZIP passwords.

Member Avatar for manishsingh137

hii me 2 orget my rar password with very imp data attached to it.
i need to know about a good passwprd cracker plzzzzz help me

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