Hello,today am going to show you how to crack password protected zip files in kali linux.

Kali linux is pre installed with password cracking tools namely:

1.John the ripper
2.Fcrackzip utility
3.Wordlists
We’ll focus more on john the ripper which is pre-installed in most unix operating systems.
However if your linux operating system lacks this tools,you can install or update the necessary packages with the following commands:

$sudo apt update


$sudo apt install john fcrackzip wordlists

John the ripper will use its own wordlist located in the /user/share/john/password.lst to crack the password.you can also locate all the wordlists in your system by typing the following command:
$locate wordlist

Step 1:create a password protected zip file
The only other thing needed to start is a password protected zip file.
Follow the steps:
Create a text file add some text and name it say hacker.txt.
Open the terminal in the directory and type the following command
$zip -password 12345678 hacker.zip hacker.txt

The command creates a zip file with the password of your choosing after the word password in the shell command above.
Replace the file names and paths to your own.

Step 2:get the password hash
To get the password hash to be cracked, we need to enter the command:

$zip2john hacker.zip


Step 3:put the password hash in a text file
Type the following command :
$zip2john hacker.zip > hash3.txt

Followed by:
$John hash.txt

Sometimes you may need to customize or create your own wordlist or use a different wordlist the command follows the following format

$john –wordlist= the wordlist path saved hashes
I.e
$john --wordlist= /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hacker.txt

The time taken to crack each password varies with the strength of the password