Posts on X2Q tagged john-the-ripper. Updated as new posts are published.
fcrackzip is a small, old, command-line tool that recovers passwords on classic-ZipCrypto-encrypted .zip files. Brute-force or dictionary, runs everywhere, still useful in 2026 — with hashcat/john as the modern follow-up when it isn't fast enough.
pdfcrack is a small, single-threaded CPU tool for recovering lost PDF user and owner passwords. Fine for 40-bit RC4 and small dictionary attacks; for 128/256-bit AES PDFs, migrate to pdf2john + hashcat on a GPU.
rarcrack is long abandoned. The 2026 way to recover a RAR/7z/ZIP password is to extract a hash with John the Ripper's rar2john/7z2john/zip2john, then run it through hashcat (GPU) or john. Dictionary first, then masks. Covers the right hashcat mode for each format.
There are two very different 'Word passwords'. Editing/read-only protection is trivial — a .docx is a ZIP, so you delete one XML element and it's gone. Password-to-open is real AES encryption and has to be cracked with office2john + hashcat. This post covers both, honestly.