Microsoft Word 2003 40-bit encryption

Anyone know of a low-cost/freeware manner in which to decrypt this b****r?

Hashcat? or John the Ripper? Of course, you need to collect your own dictionaries …

Anyone know of a low-cost/freeware manner in which to decrypt this b****r? I've used Password-Find.com before, but they've gone up in price. Thanks.

Guaword should be fine for those, even the (oldish) Freeware version

http//www.password-crackers.com/crack/guaword.html

If you are into a hurry you can try the instant decryption service here

http//www.decryptum.com/

for 29 bucks is not that bad, IMHO.

BTW I never had an occasion to use it personally but I know it was used succesfully in a couple of occasions.

@athulin
Usually (when available) "dedicated" password crackers/recover software is faster than genric ones such as John The Ripper.

jaclaz

I did try Guaword beforehand, but believe it or not, it's a 16-bit program. So none of my 64-bit OS computers will run it. Finally bit the bullet and installed a 32-bit OS VM to run Guaword. Got it to work, though.

I did try Guaword beforehand, but believe it or not, it's a 16-bit program. So none of my 64-bit OS computers will run it. Finally bit the bullet and installed a 32-bit OS VM to run Guaword. Got it to work, though.

And this is just another reason why having an old machine laying around can be handy.

Happy it worked. )

jaclaz

A piece of cake. We have the software (Advanced Office Password Breaker) that can decrypt such Word files under a minute, 100% guarantee

https://www.elcomsoft.com/aopb.html

That is being done using the pre-computed hash tables (they take 4 GB only); without them, decryption is still possible, just a bit longer (about 1 day).

If it's Office 2003 with RC4, you can find a collision with hashcat very quickly. use -m 9710 to get rc4 key, then -m 9720 to get a password equivalent.

See this article
https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-3665.html