That wasn't the password of the zip file that John cracked. TIMBOBIMBO was the password of a file that was inside the zip file, specifically a program. The program prompted for that password before it would continue running.
The blog post doesn't say the zip file password. It's not clear to me if the program that cracked the zip file even found the zip file password. It might just be able to find the plaintext but not the password.
I too was waiting to see what the ZIP password was after all these years. I wonder if there is a way to reverse the decryption key into the password, or is it a sausage machine like password hashing?
How long would it take to brute-force this on a modern PC?
> Also, in the course of things I discovered that Tim used PKZIP inside the BASIC code using a password that used non-printing characters.
Wow, that would make brute-forcing it an order of magnitude slower if you're having to cycle through control characters too. I wouldn't have thought to do this, as I wouldn't risk it not being supported.