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OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

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Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#11

Post by bbkane »

sheetjs wrote: post #10

This password specifically refers to "Password to Modify" and Excel 2019 / 365 clearly warn in the reenter password popup: > Caution: Password to modify is not a security feature. ... Malicious users can edit the file and remove the password. This type of "protection" is also present in the VBA blobs (where you can change a few bytes and work around the VBA protection) Saving a file with a password to open actually e…

Huh? I wonder where that default password came from

Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#12

Post by sheetjs »

bbkane wrote: post #11
sheetjs wrote: post #10

This password specifically refers to "Password to Modify" and Excel 2019 / 365 clearly warn in the reenter password popup: > Caution: Password to modify is not a security feature. ... Malicious users can edit the file and remove the password. This type of "protection" is also present in the VBA blobs (where you can change a few bytes and work around the VBA protection) Saving a file with a password to open actually e…

Huh? I wonder where that default password came from

A Seattle Times article from 1989:

> Inside Microsoft – A ‘Velvet Sweatshop’ or a High-Tech Heaven?

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/archive-inside-microso...

Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#13

Post by noodlesUK »

Note: this is only for write protection passwords. Files that require a password to read are actually encrypted. I think any password that would prevent editing but allow reading would necessitate a fairly complex digital signature management scheme for data provenance (which might be useful in some settings).

Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#15

Post by dev_tty01 »

pjbeam wrote: post #9
subroutine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is true, what is the point of this password remover?

Sometimes document provenance matters and you don't want a copy.

Hmm. I don't really get that. If document provenance matters, don't you want to keep it read only?

Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#17

Post by karteum »

alexanderh wrote: post #14

haha I wrote something like this in python once.

Me too : I wrote a few lines of Python for my personal use, to remove docx write protection, and a few other useful stuffs e.g. changing author names, shrinking the size of the document by converting .png/.emf to .jpg, etc. The function for removing the write protection is very short :)

  xmldata = ZipFile(docxfile).open("word/settings.xml").read().decode()
  xmldata = re.sub("", "", xmldata)
=> I wrote it for my personal use and for a few friends, and it is unfinished and not very well written, but if it can be useful to others, my little tool is here https://github.com/karteum/Doctool

Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#18

Post by userbinator »

sheetjs wrote: post #10

This password specifically refers to "Password to Modify" and Excel 2019 / 365 clearly warn in the reenter password popup: > Caution: Password to modify is not a security feature. ... Malicious users can edit the file and remove the password. This type of "protection" is also present in the VBA blobs (where you can change a few bytes and work around the VBA protection) Saving a file with a password to open actually e…

In other words, not much different from PDF's permissions feature.

Re: OfficerBreaker – pptx/docx/xlsx password remover

#20

Post by AnnoyedComment »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #15
pjbeam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes document provenance matters and you don't want a copy.

Hmm. I don't really get that. If document provenance matters, don't you want to keep it read only?

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