Password forgotten, can I crack it?

[esmajor72]

Months ago I wrote a letter to someone using Writer, and like a ding-dong I password protected it. Now, ttrying to rtecall something wrote in the letter, I cannot recall the PW I set!

Is there ANY WAY for me to retrieve the password or document?

Title Edited. A descriptive title for posts helps others who are searching for solutions and increases the chances of a reply (Hagar, Moderator).

[hol.sten]

Is there ANY WAY for me to retrieve the password or document?

Try this thread: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic ... t=password

[TerryE]

This is a polite way of saying "No". OOo uses strong encryption for its passwords so they provide real protection, and not protection against casual cracking as is the case for MSOffice. Yes if you do a google on "OpenOffice password cracking" you will find products available but all these do is automate a brute force attack based on partial memory that you do have (e.g. I think that it was less than 10 alphanumerics containing "david", "christine" or "kevin"). HINT: they cost money, and there tends to be no refund if they don't work.

MORAL: Passwords are a two edged sword; use with care.

[foxcole]

Months ago I wrote a letter to someone using Writer, and like a ding-dong I password protected it. Now, ttrying to rtecall something wrote in the letter, I cannot recall the PW I set!

Is there ANY WAY for me to retrieve the password or document?

What format was it in when you sent it? Assuming either the recipient would need to know the password or you sent the letter as a PDF file so no password was necessary, you might be able to retrieve the password or the file from the Sent folder in your e-mail client.

[esmajor72]

TerryE ... no comment for the sarcasm

foxcole... well, see here's the thing. The letter was printed out and mailed to a penpal out of state. I PW protected it because a certain someone in this household likes to nose through my files and read my stuff. UNfortunately a password was chosen that I usually don't choose, due to the fact that this somone KNOWS all possible passwords I use.

[TerryE]

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. Just to the point. OOo uses strong encryption. If you can't remember the password then you won't crack it. Don't waste money on buying a cracker programme. I strongly suggest you pick random unguessable passwords and write them down in future to avoid this this happening again. A good place to put them would be in a document called MyPasswords.ods in My Documents. Password protect it with the one password that you will always remember and that no one else could sensibly guess. And since OOo uses strong passwords their integrity will be safe.

A good hint for passwords is that there is no length so forget spaghetti like aWds.Reo: because that's exactly what you will do: forget it! Brute force cracking time is related to the size of the key as well as a priori knowledge of letter distribution and partial content. Try a medium sized phrase. If its got the odd Capital or punctuation, so such the better — One that you could never forget, but not one that your spouse / sibling / parent / flat-mate would never guess in a month of Sundays. You could use a very private secret, say to do with you first lover. I use the second line of a foreign language poem that I know — or do I?

[foxcole]

TerryE ... no comment for the sarcasm

I saw nothing sarcastic in Terry's reply. He was giving reasonable advice.

foxcole... well, see here's the thing. The letter was printed out and mailed to a penpal out of state. I PW protected it because a certain someone in this household likes to nose through my files and read my stuff. UNfortunately a password was chosen that I usually don't choose, due to the fact that this somone KNOWS all possible passwords I use.

You should have just left it at the fact that you printed and mailed the letter instead of e-mailing it. That's the only statement relevant to the issue and to the forum... and I'm afraid that in this case, Terry's suggestion is the only recourse you have for this particular file.

Did you try that link that hol.sten posted? In that thread, I provided a link to a very cool password manager, KeePass, that itself is password protected---all you have to do is remember that one password and it does the rest for you. Nice drag-and-drop functionality. You might consider using this to store passwords for all the future files you want to keep private... and you can include the file as an attachment right in the password record, so it's easier to know which password is for which file.

The only other suggestion I can come up with is a long shot. It's [very] remotely possible you might be able to recover an older unprotected version of the file using a data recovery utility such as ADRC Data Recovery: http://www.adrc.com/software/data_recovery_tools/ . (That one is not open source but it is freeware, and seems to be very good. It hasn't failed me yet, anyway!)

Another thing you might consider doing for future occurrences is buying a USB key (flash drive) to store your private files. You can encrypt this with something like Cryptainer, so no one else can read your files unless you've unlocked the volume with your password. I run all three programs I've mentioned here right from my USB key. The 256 Mb and even 512 Mb drives are quite cheap now, so you might find that to be worth looking into.