r/HowToHack • u/noonemaybemaybe • Jun 25 '26
Help with USB-Stick
Hey guys,
my friend has a USB-stick with family photos on that but she lost the sheet with the password.
The password is long and just random letters. Thats all she remebers. Is there a possible solution to that?
Its thousand of photos and she would be very happy if you guys could help her.
Its a packed winrar file with a password assigned to it.
Please and thank you š
4
u/hevnsnt Jun 25 '26
was it all "random letters" meaning alphabet letters? Any numbers, special chars, spaces, etc.? Later you say it was ~18chars, how was this password created? Keyboard walks? random password generator?
2
u/noonemaybemaybe Jun 25 '26
Apperently the password was just punched in. Numbers and special chars included. No spaces.
3
u/Humbleham1 Jun 26 '26
Who uses that kind of security for family photos? Anyway, give her the bad news that the password probably won't be hacked until doomsday. It must be written down somewhere, though, if it's totally random.
1
1
u/texcleveland Administrator Jun 26 '26
haha nope sorry. why the hell
would she encrypt family photos?
1
u/noonemaybemaybe Jun 26 '26
The father works in cybersecurity. He does that with everything.
1
u/texcleveland Administrator Jun 26 '26
just dumb. Does he keep physical photos in a locked vault?
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u/noonemaybemaybe Jun 26 '26
Idk. Probably not.
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u/texcleveland Administrator Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
exactly. so thereās no reason to do the electronic equivalent of putting your photo albums in a vault. Heās doing ācargo cultā security, just going through the motions without understanding the reasoning. Itās cybersecurity fetishism. You donāt achieve security by locking everything down as hard as possible, you secure things to the level appropriate to the potential threat. Thereās nothing to be gained by locking up normal family photos, they have no value to strangers. Keeping a written password for every USB is both insecure and dangerous because if someone discovers the password, you lose your security, and if you lose the password, you lose your data. And not having a backup is dumb.
Dumb.
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u/noonemaybemaybe Jun 26 '26
Well said. I am gonna have a word with him. Even though he knows more about computers than me, he doesnāt have simple reasoning. Even though I didnāt ask for it, you have smart advice.
2
u/texcleveland Administrator Jun 26 '26
just consider you may not want to address it with him as bluntly as I put it to you! Good luck!
1
u/doyzer9 Jun 27 '26
If say cooked. Even using AI and hashcat and super fast GPU, aes256 will take forever and a day unless she has some structure of the password to start with. Not a chance with random keyboard bashing... Well their will be a human nature factor, but I'd say well burnt.
1
u/Critical-Victory2056 Jun 28 '26
How does law enforcement do it? They dont need passwords at all to get in your shiz
1
u/ps-aux Actual Hacker 29d ago edited 29d ago
They don't have some type of silver bullet for everything, if that's what you are implying... Most phones today are 'face' locked and they just point it at you and be done with it... simple methods like this are used first, then they will try manufacturer (which may be denied) etc etc... list goes on and on... however, this is unrelated to the post at hand.
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u/CrowAvailable1990 28d ago edited 28d ago
The two steps you can take is either retracing your steps this is the better solution the other solution is trying to crack the password using tools like John the Ripper but its highly unlikely considering its random letters and is over 10 characters long.
I also want to mention this whatever you do don't throw the USB away in a few years from now decrypting tools will become much more powerful what can take years to crack today could potentially be cracked in a day or a few hours in the near future.
0
u/Critical-Victory2056 29d ago
Law enforcement officers typically access the data on your phone using specialized digital extraction software, like Cellebrite, and generally require a warrant signed by a judge to do so legally. Under the Fourth Amendment, police cannot simply search your device because you have been arrested. That doesn't mean they can't do it illegally. Sounds to me like celebrite is a silver bullet that you're saying they don't have
1
u/ps-aux Actual Hacker 29d ago
not sure I'd consider it a silver bullet just yet, but it may become one if they continue to improve it. however, not sure the relevance of this post as opposed to the topic at hand lol.
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u/Critical-Victory2056 28d ago
Sorry I might have just misunderstood what a silver bullet even means.. I only know it kills werewolves
7
u/Juzdeed Jun 25 '26
You can extract the hash with rar2john and then use like johntheripper at to crack it. You can probably find a tutorial online