Do you know how to protect excel files from information thieves and password cracking hackers? In this article we will discuss some tactics you can use to protect your Excel files from password cracking.

What you need to know

In order to protect Excel files adequately, you need to know a little history about Microsoft’s password protection and encryption techniques for the different versions of Excel. You should also understand excel password recovery techniques.

All Microsoft Office applications made before 2007 are no longer considered secure. Easy password recovery methods are available in abundance for any version before 2007. The early editions of Excel can all have password cracking done instantly on them with modern lost password recovery programs. The Excel applications before 1997 really didn’t offer much of any protection at all. Anyone could easily recover passwords and protected documents from Excel before the ‘97 edition arrived. In 1998 LastBit Excel Password was the first application to crack Excel passwords with reliable lost password recovery methods. Speed was not available however until years later. The first LastBit password recovery algorithm could take up to ten days to recover lost or forgotten passwords from Excel documents. At the time(1997-1998) the 40-Bit encryption methods used by MS Office were considered quite complicated and rather effective. The 97 Excel edition was certainly more secure than its predecessor. Office 97 Excel password recovery became very easy in years to come however. In 2004 Lastbit released its Express Recovery program for Office password recovery. Express Recovery was based on a table built by LastBit that was over two terabytes in size which was impressive for its time. It was able to do easy Excel password recovery and Word password recovery as well as other Office applications in under two minutes. So much for older versions of Excel being secure!

Modern Excel

In the year 2007, MS Office Excel finally seemed fairly secure. Office adopted the new AES encryption using a special technique that made an exhaustive search for characters a lot harder than it was previously. At that time even relatively short passwords required significant effort for password cracking programs. Lost password recovery would now take time and computing power above the means of a single computer if you wanted it done now. So it is safe to assume that Excel has finally adopted a password management method that is reasonably secure. However, if someone really wants to get your password and read your Excel documents, they can do it, it just takes time and computer power. Lastbit offers the use of cloud computing to gain enough computing power to recover lost Excel and other Office passwords, but it still takes much longer than it does to recover passwords on Excel editions made before 2007.

Author:-VJACHIK KOSHELEV
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