[Solved] How secure is password protection?

[carloslang]

I wonder what is the method used by OOo to save a document as password-protected.
I mean, can or should I send a password-protected sensitive file over internet email?
How may I best protect an OOo file that i may want to send over open (unencrypted) email?
Is there an option to use OpenPGP to encrypt my OOo document and open/save directly through OOo?

Thanks in advance.

[Villeroy]

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 6&p=111412
Unlike doc,xls,ppt ODF does not use plain password protection. The files are encrypted by some fairly secure algorithm.
Microsoft's old password protection leaves the file as open as a book to any software able to read the more or less cryptic binary format.

[carloslang]

right. i kind of suspected that. what i really wonder about is how secure the used algorithm is.
more concretely, may someone post the name of the algorithm used? . being OOo an open-source app, i imagine this is not "secret" information (and shouldn't be), right? if i'm told what algo is used, then i can go and do some research on my own to understand how secure it may be. On the other hand, if this is an app-specific algorithm, then what would be the best place to go and dig for its source code? -- (I hope an industry-standard algo is used).
thanks again.

[Villeroy]

Follow the link I gave.
Or this one directly: http://ringlord.com/publications/Decryp ... uments.pdf

Oh no, this one: http://ringlord.com/dl/Decrypting%20ODF%20Files.pdf

[carloslang]

Ah! got it now (sorry i didn't realize the initial line was a link - newbie thing i guess).
i found just what i was looking for at the new link you provided. The discussion in the other, older post was also very educational - sorry i didn't find that earlier, too .
great help!

[r4zoli]

More information on OOo security, on Security Project page and on wiki.