Russians crack OpenOffice security

Software utility unlocks locked documents

By Bryan Betts • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise Security, 20th April 2007 17:11 GMT

OpenOffice users who've locked their files and forgotten the password - or who have a document but not the password for it - can now crack their way in, thanks to a toolkit from a Russian developer specialising in password recovery.

Unsurprisingly called OpenOffice Password Recovery, its developer Intelore claims it can even allow for typing errors, so you can get back a document after mistyping the password - whatever the password length. The program can also remove read-only and revision locks from documents.

Intelore's CEO, Dmitry Rozenbaum, said that while the software can be used on any OpenOffice file or document, it should work better on your own files - assuming you can recall something about the lost or forgotten password.

"If you remember at least part of the password, maybe the fact that it was a specific length, or that it had a capital in the beginning, OpenOffice Password Recovery will make use of that information and find your password much faster than it would otherwise," he said.

He added that the program has a variety of attack profiles built in, including brute-force, smart and dictionary-based attacks, and can run in the background or foreground. It supports Unicode and can recover passwords that contain both Latin and non-Latin characters, regardless of their length or complexity. It also caches passwords once discovered - for those users who prefer to use the same ones time and again.

Rozenbaum said that although the program is now at v1.0.4, this is its first commercial release. It is free for evaluation, although that version cannot cache of view passwords longer than three characters. The full version is $79 (£40) for personal use or $129 (£65) for business use, which he said includes lifetime updates and support. ®

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