

If you get an error when trying to run this tool, you may need to install the following package. To proceed, we’ll need a tool called 7z2john. We can start by using zip2john, but we find that the tool is unable to obtain the hash. When prompted, I entered password in the example below, but that did not work. We try to open the archive using 7z, but we’re prompted for a password that we do not know. Our goal is to crack the file named backup.7z. To begin, we already have the archive we wish to crack on our filesystem. Please note that this post does not intend to serve as a walkthrough for the box. I’ll use LightWeight from HackTheBox as an example for this guide. But what happens if you come across an encrypted 7zip archive? The 7-Zip encryption is actually quite good and can require a lot of time to bruteforce, but this guide will show you how weak passwords can still break good encryption.

This post is a continuation from my last regarding cracking encrypted.

Any attacks performed in this video should only be performed in environments that you control or have explicit permission to perform them on. Disclaimer: This content is intended to be consumed by cyber security professionals, ethical hackers, and penetration testers.
