How to Crack a ZIP File Password with John the Ripper
How to Crack a ZIP File Password with John the Ripper If you've ever run into a password-protected ZIP file during a pentest, a CTF challenge, or while recovering your own archive, John the Ripper is one of the fastest ways to get in. In this walkthrough I'll show you the complete flow — from extracting the hash to cracking it to verifying the result — in just three commands. Prefer video ? I walk through this end-to-end in [the tutorial on my YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@guskhawaja). What You'll Need Kali Linux (or any distro with the `john` package installed) The `rockyou.txt` wordlist — ships with Kali at `/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt`. If it's gzipped, unpack it first with `gunzip /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt.gz`. Basic terminal familiarity That's it. John the Ripper is already installed on Kali by default, along with its companion utility `zip2john`. Why John the Ripper (and Not Just `unzip`)? When a ZIP file is encrypted, the password i...