I know the password to the RAR file as I locked it myself. Is there a way to do this in WinRAR or an equivalent program? The only thing I knew to do was to extract it, then create a new RAR without the password.
Word – remove a RAR file’s (known) password without recompressing the archive
passwordsrarwinrar
Related Solutions
I solved this problem by converting the RAR archive to a TAR archive with IZArc, and then converting the TAR archive to an RAR archive with WinRAR (Tools-Convert-Compression for options). This preserved the date/time attributes, got past the problem that WinRAR won't convert a password protected archive (even though I know the password.)
Actually, WinRAR provides this option. You just need to enable it as in the following screenshot (I got here by right clicking a folder and clicking "Add to RAR..."):
You can get there by going to Advanced -> Set Password, entering your password, and clicking on "Encrypt file names". This will disallow you to even open the archive without the proper password.
Best Answer
Out of the box, no, you can not. Version 3 of the RAR file format (implemented first in WinRAR 2.9) encrypts the actual data itself, as well as the file headers (if requested) using AES-128 encryption. With just WinRAR, it is impossible to simply "remove" the password from an archive, since the data itself is encrypted with the password.
You could make a quick batchfile implementing a "remove password" feature, which could simply unrar the archive, and then re-compress the files without a password.
Technically, the data is compressed before being encrypted. This indicates that, given enough knowledge of the
RARfile format itself, one could create a tool to AES-decrypt the datastream of the compressed files, and then save it into a newRARarchive. It should be noted, however, that this requires extensive knowledge of the file format itself.Given the number of open-source tools that support password-protected RAR files (e.g. unar), one could learn how to do this by reading existing source code, and then using the decrypted, but still compressed, bitstream to generate a new RAR archive. However, this is far from a trivial task, as you would then have to rebuild the RAR header manually as well (or at least ensure the file format's compatibility).