Brute forcing a password is tough work. You try over and over and hope for the password, or with Stuffit 5 passwords, a hash collision.
Obviously, speed is the key thing in this process, and what machines you can run the software on. Here are some interesting bits on showing speeds.
2013 was a good year for the Kasper project. Of the multiple types of StuffIt archives that exist, I’m able to confidently say that in 2013 StuffIt 5 archives are now able to always have at least a compatible password located, if not the original password used. 
Continue reading “Kasper: 2013 and the Future”
I don’t profess to be an expert programmer or a skilled security researcher, but I’ve spent a lot of time over the last dozen plus years working on recovering old passwords in StuffIt archives. StuffIt was the popular compression tools for Mac users until the Mac OS X-era, when it was overtaken by the standard ZIP format (and price per gigabyte of storage reached a point where compression just wasn’t as critical). You can still purchase Stuffit Deluxe 2011 for both Windows and Mac, but for most people there will never be a need.