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How to Break MS Word Password Protected Document?

If you have read the novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", you must remember that there was a character said free programs were available on the web to break MS Word password protected document. If you did a search then you will find that there are thousands of free download of word password breakers. All of them said MS Word document that are password protected can be opened easily with a few minutes. Is it true? This article will tell you.


For what it's worth, it is my understanding. Microsoft Word offers three levels of password protection. These protection methods can all be used together or separately:


  • Password to open: Requires a user to enter a password to open and view the document. If the Word document was set a password to open, the entire MS Word file is encrypted with the RC4 stream cipher.
  • Password to modify: Requires a user to enter a password to read and make changes to the document. When the Word file was set a password to modify, the password can be viewed or changed with a hex editor.
  • Read-only recommended: Prompts the user to open the document as read-only if they do not need to make any changes to the content.


In some case, your document was protected from editing and do not really encrypt the underlying document, so a malevolent human could open the underlying XML of the docx file and edit it directly. Other forms of password protection actually encrypt the file. If you do this kind of password protection then the file should not be opened without a password. Malicious users could still try to open the file with a variety of techniques, but it would be very difficult. Some of these techniques include:


  • Brute force and dictionary attacking: this attack basically involves the Word password breaker tool trying every possibility of every password to see if they successfully break word password. So the way for you to combat this attack is to set a strong password.
  • Rainbow tables: Word password breaker didn't need to know how Microsoft Word saves its encrypted file. If it were possible to get hold of the hashed password and the encryption algorithm used, a rainbow table might let you break the word password.


MS Word Password Breaker


SmartKey Word Password Recovery is easy-to-use software designed to unlock, crack, break word password protected document in less than 2 minutes and all by yourself. It offers three different attack methods: brute-force attack, brute-force with mask attack and dictionary attack. This program not only can help to break word passwords to open but passwords to modify .All Word versions are supported. It work like a charm and will never waste your time.

Related Article:
How to Crack Word Password?

Article Source:
http://recoverlostpassword.com/article/break-word-password.html

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