Cracking ZIP files with fcrackzip

Fast brute-force and dictionary attacks against zip archives files in Linux

Creating the Encrypted Zip File

Fcrackzip is a Linux utility. I’m using Kali Linux but you can use any Debian-derived distro.

I’ve created a compressed zip file protected by a password. A dictionary attack is an attack where a wordlist, a list of passwords, is tried against the authentication mechanism to check whether it’s correct or not.

Let’s create a file called secret.txt, then compress it and encrypt it with the zip Linux utility. Give it a password of abc123:

echo "this is a secret" > secret.txt
cat secret.txt
zip secret.zip secret.txt --encrypt 
rm secret.txt

Installing and Using Fcrackzip

Install fcrackzip on your system if you haven’t already:

sudo apt install fcrackzip -y

To get a list of all of the fcrackzip options type fcrackzip -h: