Re: Encryption Used in Word 2004 for Mac

On 2006-07-09 07:31:07 +0100, "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <john@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

There is an element of "A lock will only keep out an honest man" to this.
If you need sufficient security to prevent people in the office reading
sensitive information, MS Office encryption will do the job nicely.

Even in this case, there are very widely available tools which can break an encrypted Office doc. Don't bet on them not being used.

Google for "crack rc4", and incidentally note the third hit describes an "amateur crypto mistake" in Office :-(

If you are expecting Level 5 intrusion attempts from organised crime or
nation states, then you better organise something a bit more secure :-)

Oh, *far* more people than that will be able to break into your docs.

If you really want to securely encrypt Office documents, save them unencrypted and use a separate tool like PGP to encrypt them. You could copy them into an encrypted Apple disk image too, if you wanted a free solution that was Apple-only.

Cheers,

Chris

.

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