Advanced Office Password Breaker 2

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: CNET Staff

Not as promising as its name sounds, Advanced Office Password Breaker (AOPB) requires registration to actually decrypt Office files. The program is designed to decrypt password-protected Excel and Word 97/2000 through XP/2003 files. The program's utilitarian interface is certainly a strength. Most decryption programs attempt to find a password through dictionary or brute-force attacks. AOPB actually tests all possible encryption keys to decrypt Excel and Word files. That method results in a much shorter decryption time, especially for users who utilize P4 and dual-CPU setups. Unfortunately, the demo version allows only single-CPU decryption. AOPB will test your CPU to determine the number of keys it can test per second. Running the demo finds and saves the encryption key, but you must register the program to recover the document. Everyone will find AOPB easy to use, but the lengthy decryption period and program limitations make this a program of last resort.

Publisher's description

From ElcomSoft :

Break passwords and unlock documents instead of performing lengthy password recovery. Advanced Office Password Breaker unlocks password-protected Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets within a guaranteed timeframe instead of attacking and recovering the complex passwords. Due to the implementation of document encryption in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, a weak 40-bit encryption is still the most common method of protecting Office documents. While being strong enough to protect documents against casual curiosity, this encryption can be easily broken with modern computers and appropriate tools. No matter how long and complex your password may be, Advanced Office Password Breaker unlocks your documents in a guaranteed timeframe; on a dual-core machine, it is twice as fast as using a single core. Moreover, you can unlock 99.5% Word documents in just 30 seconds with the new Rainbow attack included with the Enterprise version.

Version 2 implements the "Rainbow tables" technology, that uses precomputed hash tables to decrypt most Word documents in just minutes instead of days.

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