From time to time someone sends me password protected Microsoft Excel (xls-files) spreadsheets. Getting xls files is in it self is bothersome, but that’s the way the world of IT is today, but hopefully more and more home and business users discover the OpenOffice productivity suite in the future. But getting password protected xls-files is just incredibly annoying – first of all it tells you that the person that just sent you the spreadsheet doesn’t have a clue on security matters, since protection techniques of that type is of no real use. They are simply too easy to crack, but again – why at all protect a document…
Howto Crack And Get Rid Of The “Password Protection” / “Recover” The Spreadsheet on Ubuntu
In order to perform the crack / recovery, we are going to use a small utility called xlcrack, xlcrack recovers lost or forgotten passwords from XLS files such as those created by Microsoft Excel. Some newer XLS files are not suitable for password recovery using this software.
Install libgsf-1
sudo aptitude install libgsf-1-dev
Download and compile xlcrack
wget http://freshmeat.net/urls/1d5772c1c5bea2854e1d04b29f1f772a
tar zxvf xlcrack-1.2.tar.gz
cd xlcrack-1.2
make
Microsoft Office 2007 is the most recent Windows version of the Microsoft Office system, Microsoft’s productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007.
New Features in Office 2007
Office 2007 contains a number of new features, the most notable of which is the entirely new graphical user interface called the Fluent User Interface (initially referred to as the Ribbon UI), replacing the menus and toolbars that have been the cornerstone of Office since its inception with a tabbed toolbar, known as the Ribbon. Office 2007 requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or higher, or Windows Vista.
The ‘Ribbon User Interface’ is a task-orientated Graphical User Interface (GUI). It features a central menu button, widely known as the ‘Office Button’. The Ribbon Interface has been rumored to be introduced into Microsoft Office 14.
The new user interface (UI), officially known as Microsoft Office Fluent, has been implemented in the core Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and in the item inspector used to create or edit individual items in Outlook. These applications have been selected for the UI overhaul because they center around document authoring. The rest of the applications in the suite will also be upgraded to the new UI in subsequent versions. The default font used in this edition is Calibri. Original prototypes of the new user interface were revealed at MIX 2008 in Las Vegas.
Getting Wine Ready for Office 2007
Wine Configuration
The following guide is based on a clean configuration directory and running in a 1024×768 virtual desktop.
Wine version used:
wine-1.1.9
Windows version emulated:
Windows XP
Office version:
Microsoft Office 2007
Download and install the latest Wine available by following this guide.
$ winecfg
When the configuration dialog appears set the virtual desktop in the graphics tab and click OK.
Then download winetricks using wget:
$ wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks msxml3 dotnet20 gdiplus riched20 riched30 vcrun2005sp1 allfonts
Installing Microsoft Office 2007
Office 2007 requires a libraries, which are not included in a plain Wine-installation. These libraries could be obtained from CrossOver Games, which is a derived version of Wine made to support games under Linux.
Download and install CrossOver Games either by hand or by using the official Ubuntu or Debian package.
After the install then
Copy rpcrt4.dll.so into Wine:
$ sudo cp /opt/cxgames/lib/wine/rpcrt4.dll.so .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/
Rename the native Wine-dll version:
$ sudo mv .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/rpcrt4.dll .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/rpcrt4.dll.bak
Rename CrossOver Games version into the original name:
$ sudo mv .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/rpcrt4.dll.so .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/rpcrt4.dll
Moreover you will need to rename msxml3.dll into *.bak too:
$ sudo mv .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/msxml3.dll .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/msxml3.dll.bak
After the renaming it is time to run winecfg again and set msxml3.dll and rpcrt4.dll to “native windows” select save and exit.
Now it is time to mount the Office 2007 cd media and start the actual Office 2007 installation.
$ sudo mount -o loop -o unhide Office-2007.iso /mnt
Now cd into the mounted directory
$ cd /mnt
$ wine setup.exe
From time to time someone sends me read-only password protected Microsoft Word (doc-files) documents. Getting word files is in it self is bothersome, but that’s the way the world of IT is today, but hopefully more and more home and business users discover the OpenOffice productivity suite in the future. But getting read-only password protected word files is just incredibly annoying – first of all it tells you that the person that just sent you the document doesn’t have a clue on security matters, since protection techniques of that type is of no real use. They are simply too easy to crack, but again – why at all protect a document…
Howto crack and get rid of the “protection” / “Recover” the document
If you are using Microsoft Office XP or Microsoft Office 2003, you can change the view to HTML-Code using Microsoft Script Editor by pressing the Alt+Shift+F11 keys.
When the document is opened in the Microsoft Script Editor then search for “Password” and you will find something similar to this: Forms ReadOnly FED5E3B6
To remove the document’s form protection:
– remove the line containing Forms and then save the document using Ctrl+s, the form protection should then be gone.
To remove the document’s read-only protection:
– remove the line containing ReadOnly and then save the document using Ctrl+s, the read-only protection should then be gone.
To remove the password:
– remove the line containing the password and then save the document using Ctrl+s.
This blog entry describes this and other techniques to recover password protected office documents and so does this page.
Microsoft Windows is collapsing under its own weight and radical changes are needed to change that according to Gartner.
Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes.
That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows. “Windows is too monolithic,†says Silver.
Brussels, 2 April 2008 — ISO members failed to disapprove the Open XML format. Microsoft has compromised the International Standards Organisation (ISO) during the rush to get a stamp for their Office OpenXML (OOXML), using unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process.
