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I have a book about C++ Programming that two years ago solved all of its chapters exercises successfully. Then saved all of these source codes into a folder, added it to a .rar file by WinRAR tool with a specific password and saved that file into my USB flash.

Now unfortunately I forgot the password, I remember that password was something like "The C++ Resolvents" or "The resolvents of C++ exercises" or ...with upper or lower cases.

I know there are some tools to recover .rar file passwords such as RAR_Password_Unlocker and so on, but:

1- It takes too long time (days or perhaps months!) to recover that long password and my machine should be On during this time!!!

2- I think they do not support spaces between password, while I'm sure there are at least two or three spaces in my password.

Does any one know is there a quick(er) way to recover my password?

Thanks in advance!

2 Answers 2

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It is nearly impossible to break a rar password with off the shelf programs. You have to use brute force option which may takes months.

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  • @mahmooh, Yeah, that security point I made, now is the cause of my headache!
    – fly hipy
    Mar 7, 2013 at 8:49
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I would make a list of any and all words you even suspect might appear in the password, then use a shell script or a C program to generate the permutations and try them.

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  • I don't know what the shell script is at all, and like the second way more, but I don't know the C, only C++, and again how to write that specific program. I don't have such skill, and those exercises were in primary level.
    – fly hipy
    Mar 7, 2013 at 8:44
  • @flyhipy: There are password cracker programs that will do this for you (test all known combinations of characters/words you know, or perform other attacks such as brute force, dictionary, known-plaintext etc.), but that's not going to help you magically recover the password in a jiffy unless it was short or otherwise very weak. "takes too long time" to crack the password is a good thing, otherwise what's the point of password protecting something if the encryption can be broken by anyone in an instant?
    – Karan
    Mar 7, 2013 at 19:16
  • @Karan & others: Yeah, that's right about the work of password protecting tools, but my case is different. I don't know any password cracker that supports spaces and gets known words of that password as a list which only works on it. Maybe the comment of "Nicole Hamilton" be the best/only solution. Anyway, Thanks for all you guys.
    – fly hipy
    Mar 8, 2013 at 8:18
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    @flyhipy: A program such as this one allows spaces to be part of the user-defined charset, and the words you want can be included in a custom dictionary. Try it and see if it works for you.
    – Karan
    Mar 8, 2013 at 9:00

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