WinRAR allows you to create both standard zip archives and your own unique format (rar). The process for archiving and setting a password is almost identical; rar, however, has it available additional option, which will be discussed below.

Setting a password for a new archive

Open WinRAR and click the "Add" button.

Select the archive format, then click the “Set Password” button:

Enter it twice (I advise you to activate the “Show password” item, because before clicking “OK” it is better to check if you have made a typo. Otherwise, you will not be able to open the archive yourself):

If desired, you can enable the “Encrypt file names” option: if such an archive is opened, then no one will even be able to read the names of folders and documents without entering a password. However, this option is only available for .rar archives.

Click OK. The password-protected archive is ready.

Now, when you try to extract its contents, the following window will appear:

If the archive has already been created and needs to be protected

In such a situation, you need to add any file to it, which you can then safely delete.

The procedure is the same: open the archive, click “Add”, selecting a file to add, and at this moment a window similar to creating a new archive will appear again. Press the password button again and you can set the protection.

Conclusion

The only drawback of WinRAR is that the program is paid. Therefore, it makes sense to use it only if you need to have an archive in .rar format. Works great with other options (zip and others) free analogues like 7Zip, which also allow you to set a password and reliably protect your content.

Open the Advanced Archive Password Recovery archive:

1. You can open a password-protected archive by brute-forcing the passwords, unless of course you remember the password. Depending on the power of your computer and the password you set (password complexity), it will take time to complete the selection. If the key is light, for example, consists of three characters, then you can open it in 5 minutes; if the password exceeds 6-8 characters, then you can try it for 4 days. But in the end you will still be successful and you will open the archive. Personally, I tried 2 times and they all justified brute-force password cracking.

How to brute force a password?

2. There are many programs on the Internet for brute-forcing passwords, some paid and some without paid, they are limited in the number of characters in the password. Let’s say they won’t sort through more than 4 characters; paid ones work without restrictions and add some other useful functions. I searched for a forgotten 12-character password for 4 days, my computer did not turn off while searching. But it doesn’t matter since the computer is powerful, I could perform other operations I needed. I am working with the Advanced Archive Password Recovery program which can be downloaded from the official Elcomsoft website and many others useful programs to select passwords. To be honest, I performed two searches on it and they all ended in success.

Advanced Archive Password Recovery Review:

3. Let's see how to work with Advanced Archive Password Recovery. After installing the program, the installation is no different from other program installations. After launch, you will see a window with a lot of settings, but don’t be alarmed, I’ll tell you how to set up the work to select a password for the archive:
4. In the picture above, I have indicated with numbers what settings will be needed to brute force the password. 1.) By clicking on the button you will be asked to select the archive to open. 2.) You can either enter the line in which the path to the archive is written yourself or select the archive as in under number 1. 3.) What method to search for the password (find out) if you want to use brute force, which is much more effective, then use brute-force. 4.) Two tabs on which settings will be made, now we are on one of them. 5.) You can select all of the symbols or numbers that may be present in the archive; the search time depends on this. 6.) You can leave which letters or symbols to start searching with as is if you have no idea what the password might contain. Next, go to the second tab under number 4, labeled Length:
5. On the Length tab, under the number 2, select the smallest value that can be password characters and the largest number of characters in the password. Click under the number 2 Start, thereby starting the process of selecting a password for the archive.

Download the programs mentioned in the article:

ARCHPR from the official website.

ARCHPR from Yandex disk.

6. Forgotten password The Accent RAR Password Recovery program will help you open the RAR archive.

   How to quickly open the password for a rar archive that you forgot:

   1. The password for the archive can be opened different ways, let's say brute force passwords is when each number and letter is substituted in different combinations. In this article we will decrypt using the resources of your video card, yes, you heard right, it can also perform calculations and calculations. To do this, we need a program, you can download it from the official website, there are many more programs for opening office documents. But no matter how beautifully it was written, you still have to wait even if you have a super powerful computer.

   How to use the program?

   2. It’s as easy as shelling pears to use, everyone knows how to install, click everything in the normal order and follow the instructions of the installer wizard, where to which disk and all that. After the first launch, you have a few days to use the non-activated version, but don’t be happy, even though they will let you use it for a few days, it will be cut down. That is, it can only remember passwords that are made up of 3 numbers, but you need 12 numbers, well, everything like that is called a trial version. But the program is worth buying, at least in pairs with different genders!

   So how to use it?

   3. After installation, the program must be launched like the others and in the first window you will be asked to select the file that we will decrypt.
   4. Under the number 1, by clicking on the button, you will be asked to select a password-protected archive. I only had one archive for the experiment and I didn’t know the password for it. I could have made the archive itself and protected it with a password, but I didn’t want the test to be really fair.
   5. After a little analysis, the program will show that your archive is password-protected and the following decryption form will be applied to it:
   6. After clicking on the next button at the end of the window, in the next window you will be offered some options on how to decrypt the password, using brute force, using your dictionary, a selection mask, leaving the brute force method as it is, it’s 3x like that. But it is created by default, and if you click the next button at the very bottom, this is the method that will find out your password.
   7. They showed how to decrypt and other settings and now the program will begin decrypting. At the very bottom you will be shown the approximate time to completion and the speed of scanning using the brute force method or another method you choose. All you have to do is wait:

   View settings and other program functions:

   8. If you look at the program settings, you will see that the program does not take the resources of the processor itself, as in other programs, but the resources of the video card. This can be seen in the picture below:
   9. Next, you can select your dictionary through which the password will be selected.
   10. Unfortunately, not everything is decided by the program, and a big responsibility falls on your computer, how powerful it is. To be even more precise, how powerful is the video card in your PC. To select passwords in a matter of seconds, you need to do as in the video below:

Article content:

If you are faced with the task of simple, but at the same time reliable transfer of confidential information to another person, then think about using a password-protected archive. You can also set a password for the archive for protection purposes. important information on your computer or laptop. It is quite difficult to crack a password even using paid programs. Often, the whole point of working with programs designed to crack an archive password comes down to a simple enumeration of numbers, letters and words. That is why good password(at least eight characters long, with numbers, letters and symbols like ^ or $) is almost impossible to hack.

In order to set our own password for the archive, we will use two archivers: WinRAR and 7-Zip. These programs are very popular and familiar to a wide range of users. Is our detailed guide will not leave you with questions about setting a password for the archive and you will be able to protect any confidential information in your car.

How to put a password on a WinRAR archive

Most computer owners are accustomed to using the WinRAR program to archive any data. This archiver is paid, but the whole point of it being paid is that after 40 days of free use, a message will appear asking you to buy a license. The functional part of the program does not suffer from this in any way. Using the mouse, click on the file that we want to archive and securely protect with a password, and then select the “Add to archive” item.

After these steps, the WinRAR archiver window will appear on the screen. You need to come up with and enter a name for the future archive (if this is not done, the default name will be used, which coincides with the name of the archived file). Then click on the “Set password” item (on old version it is located in the “Advanced” tab).

Next, enter a strong password into the appropriate fields twice (we can’t talk about any 123 or qwerty, since such passwords are cracked very quickly). If you are afraid of forgetting the password to the archive, then write it down somewhere in a notepad or text file.

We also strongly recommend checking the box next to “Encrypt file names”. If this checkbox is not checked, then your password-protected archive can be opened and the names of the folders and files that are located in it can be viewed. It will be impossible to download or open them without knowing the password, but the names will be displayed, which is unacceptable in some situations. To set a password for the archive, click “Ok”.

After this, an archive with a password will appear in the folder where the data we archived was located. You can safely write it to a flash drive or send it to someone by mail, without fear for the safety of the information in it. After creating the archive, the original file can be deleted.

To unzip the data, click right click mouse on the archive and select “Extract to current folder”. Enter your password and click “Ok”.

Now you know how to set a password on WinRAR archive. Next, we'll look at the process of setting a password using 7-Zip.

How to put a password on a 7-Zip archive

Unfortunately, the 7-Zip archiver is less popular among users, although it is absolutely free and offers open source. To set your password, run 7-Zip and specify the files or folders you want to archive. Select the files and click on the “Add” button.

A window will appear on the screen in which you need to specify a name for the archive, enter the password twice and check the box next to the “Encrypt file names” item. To create the archive, click “Ok”.

Unzipping is also easy. By using double click open the archive and enter the password.

Conclusion

As you can see, absolutely any user can set a password for the archive. It is very convenient and useful feature for the safety of important files and documents. It can be used in various situations.

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The Advanced Archive Password Recovery utility is designed to recover passwords for ZIP archives and RAR, created using almost any archiver program, as well as self-extracting exe format archives.

You can download a free trial version (8 MB) and familiarize yourself with the program for 30 days on our website.

System requirements for the ARCHPR program:

Supported OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista(32/64 bit), Windows 7 (32/64 bit), Windows Server 2003/2008
- About 6 MB of free hard disk space

On the tab Options can be set General settings programs:

1. Interface language(Fig.1) Russian, English, German;

Fig.1 Main window of the Advanced Archive Password Recovery program

2. A priority(background work priority or high);

3. Minimize to tray(if this option is enabled, when minimizing the program window, the icon will be located in the system tray; to expand the program, just click on it);

4. Event log archpr4.log(if this option is enabled, all information that is displayed in the status window is written to the archpr4.log log file. This file can be found in the following path: C:\Users\.........\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files(x86)\Elcomsoft Password Recovery\Advanced Archive Password Recovery);

5. Start attack on file select(if this option is enabled, the program analyzes the file immediately when it is opened).

Creating an archive with a password

To test the operation of the program, several archives were encrypted using WinRAR with different passwords for use various types attacks.

To create a password for the archive, you need to select in the main menu of the WinRAR program (another archiver can be used) right key mouse over the folder or file that needs to be archived and in context menu select Add files to archive (Fig. 2)

Rice. 2 Adding a file to an archive in WinRAR

On the tab Additionally choose Set password

Fig.3 Setting a password for the archive in WinRAR

In the dialog box that opens Entering your password enter the password and check the checkbox Encrypt file names

Fig.4 Dialog box Enter WinRAR program password

In the example, the folder " archive No. 1» with password 1234 .

Recovering the archive password

Now let's proceed to recovering the password for archive No. 1.

Let's open the program Elcomsoft Advanced Archive Password Recovery.

In the dropdown list Attack type choose Bust. When selecting this type of attack, all possible combinations of symbols allowed by the user on the tab will be searched Kit fields Character set(Fig.5). This type of attack is the slowest, but is often most successful against short and simple passwords.

If you know what characters the password consists of, you must in the field Character set Select or clear the necessary checkboxes to reduce password recovery time.

Fig.5 Configuring Advanced Archive Password Recovery program parameters using a brute-force attack

When all the settings for the password recovery program have been made, you need to click the button on the toolbar Open and specify the path to the encrypted archive. Upon completion of decryption, a window with the recovered password will open (Fig. 6)

Fig.6 Resulting window displaying the Advanced Archive Password Recovery program password

As we see in Fig. 6, the password was recovered in 9 seconds. This time can be reduced if information is known not only about the characters used, but also about the length of the password. This setting can be done on the tab Length(Fig.7).

Rice. 7 Setting the password length in Advanced Archive Password Recovery

Fig.8 Resulting window displaying the Advanced Archive Password Recovery program password

When specified additional information about the password (password length), recovery time was 5 seconds (Fig. 8).

If some part of the password is known, the program provides the ability to use Mask attack. A mask attack is a modified brute-force attack and is used if certain information about the password is known, namely if some of the characters in the password are known. You can specify a specific character/characters that are used in the password at a specific position.

In order to use this type attacks, required in the drop-down list Attack type choose By mask and indicate on the tab Kit known password characters in the Mask field (Fig. 9). For example, the password consists of 4 characters, starts with “a” and ends with “f”. In this case, you can specify the mask “a??f”, in which the question mark characters replace the searched ones. With this setting, guessing unknown password characters will take the same amount of time as searching for a two-character password.

Fig.9 Configuring Advanced Archive Password Recovery program parameters using a mask attack

If the password contains “ ? ”, then on the tab Advanced you can change the character that will be used when specifying the mask as an unknown character.

Users often use whole words as passwords to make them easier to remember, rather than a random set of characters. To recover such a password, the following type of attack is suitable: According to the dictionary. This method allows you to brute force passwords included in dictionaries. Compared to trying all possible combinations of characters, trying dictionary words takes much less time, but there is a high probability that the password is not in the dictionary.

When setting up this attack (Fig. 10) on the tab Dictionary You can specify the path to the dictionary that will be used to recover the password.

Rice. 10 Configuring Advanced Archive Password Recovery program settings using a dictionary attack

Unfortunately, only one dictionary can be used at a time. Elcomsoft Advanced Archive Password Recovery already has three built-in dictionaries (Fig. 11): English (242965 words), German (80472 words) and Russian (75459 words). Additional dictionaries can be used.

Fig. 11 Selecting a dictionary for password recovery

Attack method Plaintext used if an archive consisting of several files contains at least one decrypted file. In this case this method The attack allows you to decrypt all other files in the archive, regardless of the complexity of the password.

You can find out in advance how long it will take to recover your password. To do this you need to select desired type attack (the speed test is only possible for a brute force attack or a mask attack), specify the path to the archive and click on the button on the toolbar Test. At the end of the test in the window Result you will be able to see the total number of possible passwords, the speed of searching for options, as well as the approximate time to search for a password (Fig. 12).

Rice. 12 Result window test mode Advanced Archive Password Recovery programs

In conclusion, I would like to say that if you forget the password to the archive, you should not panic. Password recovery is not an easy task, but it is quite doable.

Today I’ll tell you how to set a password for a WinRar archive. Not so long ago I wrote a similar article, but it was about installation. Not everyone uses 7Zip; many still (since the late 90s) use the WinRar archiver.

I won’t write why you shouldn’t use WinRar, but the mere fact that this archiver is paid should make you think. Well, it’s clear that not everyone pays money for a license, but uses broken versions, but why if there are free analogues?

In general, let's not talk about bad things, if it just so happens that you have the WinRar archiver installed and you need to set a password for the archive, this article is just for you.

If you still don’t have this archiver and want to use it, you can download WinRAR on the official website. Then install it and proceed directly to password protection of the archive.

Select the folder or file you need that you want to archive with a password and right-click on it and select “Add to archive...”

In the parameters window, specify the archive type (I left RAR) and click on the “Set password” button

Enter the password twice and check the “Encrypt file names” checkbox, then click “OK”

In the archive parameters window, also click “OK”

Now try to open the archive you created, if you did everything correctly, during opening you will be prompted to enter a password

If you enter the password incorrectly, you will see an error message

and only if you enter the password correctly, you will see the contents of the archive

I want to warn you a little. This type of protection is not reliable. Password-protected archives are quite easy to hack. So I advise you not to store confidential information in this form and not to transfer it to third parties.