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Re: Investigating the Suspect Computer
> THIS PACKAGE IS DISTRIBUTED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AND
> PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS ONLY!! THE ARCHIVE FILE IS [PKZip]
> ENCRYPTED, AND YOU WILL NEED A PASSWORD TO EXTRACT
> THE ARCHIVE. IF YOU ARE NOT WORKING IN LAW ENFORCEMENT,
> DON'T BOTHER TO DOWNLOAD THE FILE, WE WILL NOT DISTRIBUTE
> THE PASSWORD UNLESS WE CAN VERIFY YOUR CREDENTIALS.
6161234432565677 possibilities for up to 8 printable-characters (roughly 2^52)
217180147133 poss. for up to 8 lowercase letters (roughly 2^38)
54507958502609 poss. for up to 8 lower/upper letters (roughly 2^46)
221919451578029 poss. for up to 8 alphanumeric chars. (roughly 2^48)
Apparently, the password can be up to 80 printable characters in length...
715934338421370680344382998236434541670979942120825502830105586745112050\
939906381266091474511676185877408805164512571770773165479768270778933665\
90119714237357 possibilities worst-case (roughly 2^524)
According to one of the READMEs that comes with a public domain
implementation of the PKZIP crypto algorithm, there is a known-plaintext
attack against it described at http://www.cryptography.com/.
If it's 8 or less lower-case letters, it would seem that it's probably
crackable in a reasonable amount of time on a high-end desktop PC or
workstation. Anything more would probably require a distributed attack.
--
Brian Buchanan [email protected]
Never believe that you know the whole story.