how do passwords work?

newbie here. so consider this paradox: let's say you have a pass protected rar file. now the password should be stored somewhere in the file to compare against the inputted password. so if it's there how come you cant just extract it?

>>12
From your description it really sounds more as if it's trying to decrypt the payload directly and then compare the results with a CRC in the header, and not at all storing a hash of the password anywhere. So >>9 is wrong.