Re: password protection in office XP documents

[Brian Eckman <eckman () umn edu>]

security () rexwire com wrote:
> Why has Microsoft bothered putting document protection in their
> application? It takes 5 seconds to by pass it.

Let me make sure I understand what you are saying.

> Save a office document (that has document
> protection) as a .html document and than edit the page in a html editor,
> remove everything between the  <o:DocumentProperties> </style>. Now open
> this page in word and all the protection is gone. No need to know the
> password.

If you had the office document open, which AFAIK you need to do in order 
to save it as HTML, then don't you already know the password? If not, 
how did you open it and save it as HTML without knowing the password? 
That would be a flaw worth noting.

If you have the document open, you can remove the password from within 
the Office application. It would be a lot faster.

> Microsoft evens documents this in their help file. Should this not be
> considered a security violation from a user point of view
>
> SKP


I fail to see any flaw in what you have listed. Am I missing something? 
Or are you expecting Office to allow you to password protect HTML files? 
I don't believe it claims to do that, and it shouldn't be a surprise 
that it cannot do that.

If you want to use it's "protection", leave it in .doc format. Passwords 
are still crackable with the right software, but that isn't news.

--
Brian Eckman
Security Analyst
OIT Security and Assurance
University of Minnesota
612-626-7737

"There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who
understand binary and those who don't."


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