pyaes_bruteforce

A small, lab‑safe utility that attempts to recover the password for files encrypted with the pyAesCrypt format (*.aes). Built for your own data recovery, training, and research.

---

Features

• Wordlist brute force against pyAesCrypt (*.aes) files
• Resume capability via --resume <N> to skip the first N candidates
• Streaming decryption using pyAesCrypt’s buffered API (default 64 KiB blocks)
• Safe output handling: writes to a temporary file first, then atomically moves on success
• Minimal dependencies and a straightforward CLI

This tool targets the pyAesCrypt container format specifically. It does not attack general ZIP/7z/GPG containers.

---

How it works (at a glance)

For each candidate password in the wordlist:

1. Attempt decryption via pyAesCrypt.decryptFile(infile, tmp_out, password, BUF_SIZE).
2. On success, move the temporary file to the requested output path.
3. On failure, catch the exception and continue with the next candidate.

No plaintext is kept if a password is incorrect; temporary files are cleaned up.

---

Quick start

1) Install requirements

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install pyAesCrypt

If you prefer pinned versions, add pyAesCrypt to your requirements.txt and pin a specific release.

2) Usage

The script name below reflects your file: simple_pyaes_bruteforce.py.

# Basic usage
python simple_pyaes_bruteforce.py \
  -i encrypted_file.aes \
  -w /path/to/wordlist.txt \
  -o recovered.bin

# Resume from a specific wordlist index (e.g., 10000th candidate)
python simple_pyaes_bruteforce.py \
  -i web_20250806_120723.zip.aes \
  -w rockyou.txt \
  -o web.zip \
  --resume 10000

Command‑line options (as implemented in this repository):

Flag	Description
-i, --infile	Path to the *.aes file (pyAesCrypt format)
-w, --wordlist	Path to the candidate password list (one per line)
-o, --outfile	Where to write the decrypted output on success
--resume	(Optional) Integer offset in the wordlist to skip candidates

Run python simple_pyaes_bruteforce.py -h for the authoritative help, in case you’ve modified flags.

---

Notes & limitations

• Format: Supports files created with pyAesCrypt. (This is not a generic AES file cracker.)
• Buffer size: Defaults to BUF_SIZE = 64 * 1024 (64 KiB), matching pyAesCrypt defaults.
• Performance: CPU‑bound + I/O‑bound; for large wordlists, prefer an SSD and avoid verbose logging.
• Stability: On successful decryption, the temporary file is atomically moved to the final path. On failure, the temp file is removed.
• Integrity: pyAesCrypt performs integrity checks; wrong passwords raise an exception which this tool treats as “try next”.

---

Ethics & legal

This tool is intended for:

• recovering your own lost passwords,
• research/education in a lawful, authorized context.

Do not use it on data you do not own or lack explicit permission to test. You are solely responsible for complying with applicable laws and agreements.

---

Tips

• Make sure your terminal encoding can handle passwords with non‑ASCII characters.
• Consider splitting large wordlists and using the --resume flag to chunk progress.
• Keep backups of .aes files before experiments to avoid accidental overwrites.

---

Project layout

.
├── simple_pyaes_bruteforce.py
└── README.md  (this file)

---

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

---

Acknowledgements

• pyAesCrypt for the encryption container and reference implementation.