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Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 13:53

A friend called and said one of his clients used a password to lock a Microsoft Word file, and forgot it.

Does the password become part of an encryption key? Is there any solution without the known PW?

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 14:32

What version of word is the file created in.

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 15:06

You'll probably need Thunder Tables for a recent MS word file.

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 15:30

CK wrote:You'll probably need Thunder Tables for a recent MS word file.


Disagree with you, will take no more than 2min. MAX.

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 15:38

Disagree with you, will take no more than 2min. MAX.


Care to elaborate? Unless there's something I don't know about that doesn't involve a rainbow table or brute force attack, then I don't agree with you but I stand to be corrected...

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 15:48

jono-ats wrote:A friend called and said one of his clients used a password to lock a Microsoft Word file, and forgot it.

Does the password become part of an encryption key? Is there any solution without the known PW?

http://www.petri.co.il/recover-word-2010-password.htm

Otherwise ask Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22micro ... k+OR+crack

"About 1,930,000 results"

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 15:49

CK wrote:
Disagree with you, will take no more than 2min. MAX.


Care to elaborate? Unless there's something I don't know about that doesn't involve a rainbow table or brute force attack, then I don't agree with you but I stand to be corrected...


Passware

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 16:25

Passware might find it with a dictionary attack in 2 minutes but not if it's a complex password or above Office 2003.

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 16:34

Thank you for your helpful replies.

I referred the client directly to Cleanroom, who contacted us with more info.

Jono

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 17:18

CK wrote:Passware might find it with a dictionary attack in 2 minutes but not if it's a complex password or above Office 2003.




Passware Kit Enterprise and Passware Kit Forensic utilize Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) a highly scalable cloud computing platform for accelerated password recovery.
That should speed up the process.

Loki

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 18:20

That was my point Loki, "regular" PW cracking is not sufficient. You need tables or GPU processing.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about the topic :wink:

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 22:03

From what I know Office 2010 does 100000 SHA1 hashings (50000 for Office 2007) to the passphrase before using it as an encryption key in AES128 encryption
Even with Compute Cloud it will be very long brute force process

Unless you client is using very simple password

Re: Word file password question

April 23rd, 2012, 22:09

http://blog.crackpassword.com/2009/07/o ... re-secure/

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 3:08

Doomer wrote:From what I know Office 2010 does 100000 SHA1 hashings (50000 for Office 2007) to the passphrase before using it as an encryption key in AES128 encryption
Even with Compute Cloud it will be very long brute force process

Unless you client is using very simple password


Most of the Office work regular people set simple passwords = easier cracking
if you look @ it from this point you will find the answer and it does work based on my experience.
Unless someone who want to play FBI and sets a complex one. :wink:

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 4:39

if you look @ it from this point you will find the answer and it does work based on my experience.


So, you are wrong then? Your original reply suggested that you would get the password in 2 minutes. This was based on the probability that the password was something easy like "password1"? What if the password was $"£%FSDJFXDJ$"-19e492()&*?? I hope you aren't charging $50 for password cracking :)

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 6:34

CK wrote:
if you look @ it from this point you will find the answer and it does work based on my experience.


So, you are wrong then? Your original reply suggested that you would get the password in 2 minutes. This was based on the probability that the password was something easy like "password1"? What if the password was $"£%FSDJFXDJ$"-19e492()&*?? I hope you aren't charging $50 for password cracking :)


Most of the Office work regular people set simple passwords = easier cracking

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 7:08

einstein9 wrote:Most of the Office work regular people set simple passwords = easier cracking


This is the reason people dont set simple passwords....

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 7:22

up till now, and more specific in Office docs. i never had any problem with it maybe lucky

but also consider regular people set easy password to remember not using pass. generators as the sample provided on prev. post

whatever is the case, i guess no need to go any more discussing this issue, will not lead anywhere right :wink:

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 8:37

einstein9 wrote:Most of the Office work regular people set simple passwords = easier cracking

How many percent is the "most"
And how short/easy are the "simple passwords"
I would like to see this statistics

Re: Word file password question

April 24th, 2012, 8:43

I can set VjqK.mbvsqGfhjkm password and it will be almost impossible to crack but very easy for me to remember because it's Russian phrase typed on English keyboard

One can take a phrase from a movie and add some digits/symbols inside and dictionary attack will be very limited
Example: TheMatr1xHasUNeo
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