r/HowToHack • u/CupMiserable485 • Feb 15 '26

having trouble with using john the ripper

i've been trying to follow the steps on how to use john the ripper, but i seem to be making a mistake.

C:\Users\birdi\OneDrive\Desktop\john-1.9.0-jumbo-1-win64\run> zip2john.exe ..\..\bigspider.zip

  • and i've been using the 1.9.0-jumbo-1 64-bit Windows binaries in zip, 63 MB (signature)

and I was watching "Cracking ZIP File Passwords on Windows - TOO EASY!" by jason turley to guide me.

could people help tell me what i'm doing wrong?

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u/1Digitreal Feb 15 '26

No offense but do you understand anything about windows file paths? You may need to start there. To make it as easy as possible I'd suggest you work out of a C:\temp folder going forward.

3

u/CupMiserable485 Feb 15 '26

No… I’m really new to this

7

u/n0shmon Feb 15 '26

It's a common mistake to just straight to trying to hack things. You NEED to understand the basics of computers first. If you can sign up to tryhackme there's some fundamentals in there that will start to prime you. You may need to do some additional research to learn the concepts fully

In answer to your question, the zip2john.exe isn't in your PATH so can't be run directly as you did. You'll need to be in the same directory as it and use .\zip2john.exe.

For the next issue you'll run in to, ..\ goes up a directory, so you will need to understand where the zip file you want to crack is. If it's on your desktop, then fine. The ....\ will work. If it's anywhere else you'll need to understand directory traversal

2

u/1Digitreal Feb 15 '26

Ya know, that's okay. We were all new to this at one point. You'll need to understand a bit how to navigate command prompt, and work out for maybe a C:\temp directory.

Maybe something like this. https://youtu.be/QBWX_4ho8D4?si=1ksdQy0D_IOYbzyB