Web service for decrypting password protected Word and Excel documents

Berlin's online service provider Decryptum promises to return the content of password-protected Word/Excel files (2003/2002/2000/97) sent in via its web interface, as plain text, in only three minutes. You can also see in advance how your file will be decrypted, thanks to a free preview. There is no restriction on the length of the password.

Decryptum claims that other services take 2 to 14 days for the same job, with some of them also having a limit on the length of the password. Decryptum bills according to what it calls "credits", with one credit (starting at 25 euros) being the charge for one file. The file transfer is protected by SSL and a PIN, but those who still hesitate to trust external service providers with their files can also purchase one of the many tools for this task, such as office key starting at 125 dollars, which is also said to work for other Office files (Access, Outlook, and PowerPoint). Less expensive products like Office Password Recovery try to figure out the password using dictionaries and a trial-and-error approach, which sometimes takes a long time. A number of service providers offer fast decryption based on rainbow tables (pre-calculated hash tables) for MD5, SHA-1 and NTLM, for a charge. In addition, there are a number of free services, such as plain-text. No other service as fast as Decryptum's (especially for Excel and Word) is currently known.

(trk)