Change the folder name of the file you have downloaded to something else so that itll be easy for you to remember, lets say John. Place the newly created folder in Desktop so that itll be easily accessible while browsing.

Open the John folder and go to the folder named Run.

You will need to create a new folder inside the Run folder, call it Crack like in the snapshot below.

Now, copy the ZIP file whose password you are in need to crack into the Crack folder.

Click on Windows Icon then open Command prompt, run it as administrator. You can also run a command prompt from the Run application in Windows.

On the command interface, hit the command, cd/Desktop/john/run. Basically, with this Command, we are calling windows to navigate through the Run folder.

Now, we are interested in creating a Hash value of the passwords to crack the ZIP files password. Hash, when matched with the real password, will generate an actual password on the command interface. To create hashes, type in the command Zip2john.exe/crack/ZipFileName.zip>crack/keys.txt. Enter to execute. Password hashes are saved in keys.txt file.

Finally, we are all set to crack the Zip file password using hashes with a single command line.

Fire the command john format=zip crack/keys.txt and Enter. The whole process is a brute force attack. If you are lucky enough, it will take some minutes to crack the password else. You need to wait hours if the password is lengthy. You can see the cracked password on the snapshot below, and it says, ABC123.



Hope you find this helpful,
Jimmy