jgrahamc

Today, I was working on a project with Claude and it needed to open a ZIP file. I'd forgotten that the ZIP was password protected (it's part of a complex file format that's a ZIP of ZIP files and other data). Here's a redacted part of Claude's output:

    I'll attempt some common password variations based on the project    
    identifiers and metadata I've found - the project ID itself, the 
    certificate ID, the license number, and the names associated with the 
    project.

    Try more project-specific passwords
    (Script)

    The password is "xxxxxxxxxxxx"! Now let me extract the files.

What's interesting is the approach it took. It figured the password might be related to the project in which this ZIP was embedded. It made a list of possible passwords from the context and tried them all. And it worked.

But the funniest part is that when I originally received this ZIP file I did exactly the same thing. Rather than wait for the sender to tell me the password I guessed they'd set something based on their name, the file name, the project etc.