Password anomaly?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron M
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron M

I password protected a document using 8 characters
consisting of upper & lower case letters, numbers & a
special character. I then used a password recovery tool
from LastBit software to see how long it would take to
crack my password. In just under an hour it informed me
that it had found the password and showed me a 5 character
password that only had one letter in common with the
actual password, yet this shorter password opened the
document. The original password worked also.

Can anybody tell me how this can happen?
 
Which version of Word?

Were you password protecting from opening the document?
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
XP
yes - just the standard, nothing advanced
-----Original Message-----
Which version of Word?

Were you password protecting from opening the document?
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ------- --
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.




.
Click to expand...
 
In some cases password recovery programm can construct a "fake"
password (like v!b#$F) which is accepted by valid one and you can open
a document.

 
I realize that, hence the posting. What I want to know is
how this can be? Is it common? Is it unique to Word or
MS products, or do all applications have this flaw?
 

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