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Does a complex Excel VBA Password provide additional security
I'm trying to maximize my excel addin security. My research indicates an Excel 2003 VBA password may be a max of 32 characters and the password may include letters (not sure if upper and lower case are considered different), numbers, keyboard special characters and spaces. Does a complex excel VBA password (i.e. 32 char long and many types of char) provide more security against the password recovery tools? I thought the recovery tools have different algorithms. - One algorithm is a brute force match which may take a long time (days or weeks ?) to match a complex password. - Another algorithm is to remove the password and replace it with something else. A complex password would have limited value in this algorithm. I would also expect this recovery tool to succeed or fail quickly. Please provide any other suggestions you may have for improving an addin security. thanks. |
#2
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Does a complex Excel VBA Password provide additional security
Excel does not store the password as text, but a hashed value. As such a
complex password would make it more difficult for a brute force attack, but no effect on the replace method. Having said that, the WB/WS protection can be easily broken irrespective of the initial password text used, basically with a brute force method. VBA passwords are more difficult, but not much http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/fileandvbapwords.html There are various tools to obfuscate your VBA code also, if you feel it worthwhile. Using a compiled method would render the code much more difficult to understand, if VB6 but not the .Net variety AFAIK. NickHK "alan57" wrote in message ... I'm trying to maximize my excel addin security. My research indicates an Excel 2003 VBA password may be a max of 32 characters and the password may include letters (not sure if upper and lower case are considered different), numbers, keyboard special characters and spaces. Does a complex excel VBA password (i.e. 32 char long and many types of char) provide more security against the password recovery tools? I thought the recovery tools have different algorithms. - One algorithm is a brute force match which may take a long time (days or weeks ?) to match a complex password. - Another algorithm is to remove the password and replace it with something else. A complex password would have limited value in this algorithm. I would also expect this recovery tool to succeed or fail quickly. Please provide any other suggestions you may have for improving an addin security. thanks. |
#3
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Does a complex Excel VBA Password provide additional security
Locks only keep the honest people out. The vba password can be bypassed, so don't worry about the length. You might consider paying one of the established contributors in this programming group to convert your add-in to a com add-in. That would be pretty good security. However, I believe then the add-in would not work on XL 97. No, I don't do that type of work. -- Jim Cone San Francisco, USA http://www.realezsites.com/bus/primitivesoftware "alan57" wrote in message I'm trying to maximize my excel addin security. My research indicates an Excel 2003 VBA password may be a max of 32 characters and the password may include letters (not sure if upper and lower case are considered different), numbers, keyboard special characters and spaces. Does a complex excel VBA password (i.e. 32 char long and many types of char) provide more security against the password recovery tools? I thought the recovery tools have different algorithms. - One algorithm is a brute force match which may take a long time (days or weeks ?) to match a complex password. - Another algorithm is to remove the password and replace it with something else. A complex password would have limited value in this algorithm. I would also expect this recovery tool to succeed or fail quickly. Please provide any other suggestions you may have for improving an addin security. thanks. |
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