Howto. Crack read-only protection of DOC, DOCX and ODT files

It's relatively easy to crack read-only protection of DOC, DOCX and ODT files. To do that you need to:

• Microsoft Office 2003. Open the DOC file with Microsoft Office 2003, press Ctrl + Shift + F11. Search for "password" and you'll find something like that:

<w:DocumentProtection>ReadOnly</w:DocumentProtection> <w:UnprotectPassword>4A14C4F4</w:UnprotectPassword> Remove those lines. Save the document :)

• Microsoft Office 2007. Open the DOCX file with ZIP archiver. Open word/settings.xml. Search for "readOnly" and you'll find something like:

<w:documentProtection w:edit="readOnly" w:enforcement="1" w:cryptProviderType="rsaFull" w:cryptAlgorithmClass="hash" w:cryptAlgorithmType="typeAny" w:cryptAlgorithmSid="4" w:cryptSpinCount="50000" w:hash="OBA0MTMXcBKqQGGqdD3bQBFHfPY=" w:salt="/u6Wen/l/VQ+qL49Hlxg/A=="/> Remove those lines and save the file.

• OpenOffice.org Write. Open the ODT file with ZIP archiver, edit settings.xml. Search for "LoadReadonly" and "ShowRedlineChanges". You'll find something like that:

<config:config-item config:name="LoadReadonly" config:type="boolean">true</config:config-item> <config:config-item config:name="ShowRedlineChanges" config:type="boolean">true</config:config-item> Remove those lines and save the file.