Decrypting old MS Word docs

[Efwkub at aol.com]

On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 03:20:17AM -0400, nocturn wrote:
> All I know is that up to 6.0, word used a very silly way to protect files.
> 
> Try viewing them with strings, maybe the password is readable.

Forgive me if I'm missing something I'm pretty ignorant, but:

Long ago in Computer Shopper (in the UK) the tech help man published a word 
macro, saying that he was reluctant to, but he wouldn't be teaching the bad 
guys anything they didn't know, so he would help the reader. It was just a matter 
of using Word's inbuilt VBA? or whatever macro language it was to try every 
possible character combination. 

I cut out and saved the article - most unfortunately I had a look a couple of 
months ago and couldn't find it. I also tried Google but failed to find 
anything.

So is Stephen motivated enough to put say Win 98 and Word 6 or 7 on an old 
box? (Or Wine?) The Shopper expert was good on exactly what range of characters 
to try for, but Stephen may be able to recall what he did and did not use in 
his passwords. Likewise Stephen may not have used the full number of characters 
which could greatly cut the time needed to run the macro.

HTH,  Edward
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