VBA Passwords

[barbarian]

Does anyone have the URL of a free VBA Password Cracker. I have found 'try me' versions but they usually only reveal passwords 2 charaters in length?

[Grinder]

If you know VBA, can't you write one?

All you have to do is come up with an algorithm to generate each possible password in turn.

[xoggoth]

The really stupid thing about passwords in Excel, probably other office progs too, is that if you just open the file in Wordpad you can read much of the content anyway.

[barbarian]

Cracked it

I received an MS Excel file from Germany containing Macros and just wanted to check it was legit.

Yes as xoggoth says dropping into WordPad did reveal the contents of the sheets albeit that the orientation of the cell’s contents was sometimes rotated and yes certain parts of the VBA macro were visible, but I really needed more detail.

In amongst all the ‘Freeware’, ‘Shareware’ and ‘DownRightDodgyWare’, I found a site that has an Excel Add-In that Unprotects both the ‘Sheets’ and the ‘Workbook’ itself.

It does not reveal the original password but does provide a ‘Hashed’ password that also works on pristine copies of the same file.

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/removepwords.html

It appears that the Add-In is free, or a least I hope so.

Rising to Grinders challenge I then started on the VBA password, I created an Excel file with a 2 character VBA password saved,closed, and opened went into VB and opened the Password dialogue window. Then opened another instance of Excel and using VB, AppActivate and SendKeys, wrote a routine. And yes I cracked my own password – result. However when I tried this on the target file, it was still trying when I came back to it in the morning.

Life’s too short, I chose the most respectable website offering I could find, chanced my VISA card paid $20, and I was lucky, it cracked the VBA password in under a minute.

[Grinder]

Rising to Grinders challenge I then started on the VBA password, I created an Excel file with a 2 character VBA password saved,closed, and opened went into VB and opened the Password dialogue window. Then opened another instance of Excel and using VB, AppActivate and SendKeys, wrote a routine. And yes I cracked my own password – result. However when I tried this on the target file, it was still trying when I came back to it in the morning.

Life’s too short, I chose the most respectable website offering I could find, chanced my VISA card paid $20, and I was lucky, it cracked the VBA password in under a minute.

I would have used Workbooks.Open [filename], [password] and trap the error, but of course there are millions of possible passwords to generate.

AppActivate & SendKeys is not the fastest way of doing it, but you did the right thing paying for a product to do it - a principle that IT outsourcing is built upon!