17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
A client of mine has lost the password to a Microsoft Word v6 document. I've found stuff on the net to crack Wordperfect, and pointers to stuff to crack Lotus 1-2-3, Quatro-Pro, MS Excel and Paradox, but nothing on Microsoft Word. Does Word use real cryptography, or does someone out there have a way to break it pretty quickly?
Some months ago there was an article in a german computer magazine about the Microsoft Excel chiffre. If I remember well it was a simple thing: Every byte is rotated by two (?) bits and then a 12-character password is xored cyclic (vigenere-chiffre). The format of the file should be enough to do a known-plaintext-attack. Doesn't have the Microsoft word document a lot of 0-Bytes within the first hundred bytes? Hadmut