openwall / openwall/john

zip2john, rar2john don't exit non-0 when given incompatible files

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enhancement maintenance/cleanup
Dominant language
C
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Description

So I was hoping that a .ace archive might work with one of the existing archive2johns.
Both zip2john and rar2john don't output anything when given an ace archive file...and they return 0 exit status.

Seems like this will make it difficult to detect error conditions when scripting as we have to check for the absence of stdout rather than presence of output on stderr or non-0 exit code.

Related...
Wondering about the feasibility of contributing an ace2john for ace archives.
I haven't dug into the .ace format yet, but there are at least a couple open source ACE implementations that cover the encryption bit.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by inspecting the zip2john and rar2john entry points and how they handle an incompatible ACE archive. Reproduce the command behavior with an ACE file, then identify the existing error-output and exit-status conventions. Done means both utilities report the incompatibility and return a non-zero status; the related ace2john idea is separate scope.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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