In reinforced concrete, the passivation film refers to the spontaneous formation of an ultra-thin film of corrosion product on a metal's surface that acts as a barrier to additional chemical reactions and is extraordinarily helpful in mitigating corrosion damage. However, the Cl ions can significantly harm the completeness of the passivation film and thus facilitate the corrosion process. In view of the complexity of the passivation film composition, in this work, the Cl attack process of typical structures of passivation films (α-Fe2O3, β-Fe2O3 and γ-Fe2O3) is studied by Bonn-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics and density functional theory. It is found that the β-Fe2O3 and γ-Fe2O3 have the best and worst resistance of Cl ions, respectively. The reduced gradient density analyses indicate that the Cl ions can break chemical bonds of passivation film by creating Cl–Fe bonds. The details of binding energy and electron localization analyses prove that the rank of the strength of binding is γ-Fe2O3 > α-Fe2O3 > β-Fe2O3. Moreover, Different from the surface adsorption of α-Fe2O3 and β-Fe2O3, γ-Fe2O3 adsorbs Cl ions into the matrix, which also results in the formation of more chemical bonds. Further analyses of the density of states also confirm the bonding formation in the Cl ions attack process. This work suggests that the increase in the proportion of β-Fe2O3 in the composition of the passivation film is a potential approach for inhibiting corrosion. And also an effective method for evaluating the performance of passivation films is also proposed, especially since it is extremely difficult to evaluate given its nanometer characteristics.