Thats easy hacking, pal!

Yesterday I was talking about secrets hiding and cryptography. A friend of mine said he was in a position to crack any Word document in a single day as a highest. He said it was not a difficulty of password complexity: he knew how to strip Word protection away. As a proof, he took an old Word document and he was in fact in a position to crack it in a few minutes.

I mentioned he was only fortunate and that I was ready to bet a non trivial sum of income that he would not be able to crack a Word document encrypted by me. He laughed out loud, he stated I just wanted to shed cash... but he did not accept my bet.

Then I sent the Word document encrypted by me to him anyway: he is still trying to crack it (a week is already passed... but I feel the encryption will stand against his attacks for ten/fifteen years).

I told you this tiny story as a metaphor of how issues actually go when talking about encryption: it is virtually always a matter of approach, and not tools.

Word has an excellent encryption system, although it is limited by US essential length limitation: if you just know how to do it, you can super-encrypt a Word document, and be confident that no-one particular (except, probably, CIA) will succeed in cracking it. The difficulty is that it is not easy to encrypt a Word document effectively: you ought to know a thing or two before undertaking it. Just pressing "Guard this document with a password" does not operate (and tends to make folks like my buddy boast himself!)

The story has morale: marketplace lack of tools that make severe encryption easily. Thats a single of encryption software property missions: to create easy to use, but critical encryption tools (such as Folder Crypt).

Secondarily, that it is usually heard of individuals cracking programs, software program barriers, ciphered documents and this tends to make the casual Web user think that no genuine security is feasible on Internet. Again, this occurs simply because encryption processes and policies are often weak, when not at all bugged. pki

On the contrary, data encrypted following secure processes and making use of encryption common tools stay secret.

Oh, by the way: to safely encrypt a Word document just comply with these methods:

1. Begin Word.

2. Choose File | Conserve as.

three. Choose the Tools extended menu choice.

four. Select Safety Options from the drop-down list.

five. Click the Sophisticated button.

6. From the Encryption Sort dialog, copy the name of the encryption type name and encryption algorithm from the Select an encryption variety list.

7. RC4, Microsoft enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic provider

eight. Set optimum crucial length to 128