Microsoft Office encryption (legacy)

E111853

Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) refers to the older, less secure document protection system in early Office versions that relied on the RC4 stream cipher and is now considered cryptographically weak.

All labels observed (1)

Label Occurrences
Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) canonical 1

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (41)

Predicate Object
instanceOf cryptographic system
document protection mechanism
appliesToFormat .doc
.ppt
.xls
attackFeasibility practical password recovery with modern hardware
cipherType stream cipher
configuration user-supplied password only
designGoal prevent casual access to documents
documentation described in reverse-engineered security analyses
integrityProtection limited or absent cryptographic integrity
keyDerivation weak password-based key derivation
keyManagement password-derived symmetric key
notDesignedFor strong cryptographic confidentiality
passwordSpace limited effective key space
primaryCipher RC4
provides password protection for documents
recommendation do not use for sensitive data
replacedBy Office 2007+ AES-based encryption
Office Open XML ECMA-376 / ISO/IEC 29500 encryption
securityCommunityView broken
insecure by modern standards
securityStatus cryptographically weak
deprecated
standardizationStatus proprietary Microsoft scheme
statusInModernOffice legacy compatibility only
usedInComponent Microsoft Excel
linked to: Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint
linked to: PowerPoint

Microsoft Word
linked to: Word
usedInProduct Microsoft Office
usedInVersion Microsoft Office 2000
linked to: Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2003
linked to: Office 2003

Microsoft Office 97
Microsoft Office XP
usesHashFunction weak or outdated hashing for key derivation
vulnerability inadequate use of RC4
lack of modern integrity protection
susceptible to brute-force attacks
susceptible to dictionary attacks
susceptible to key recovery attacks
weak key derivation from passwords

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

RC4 usedIn Microsoft Office encryption (legacy)
subject linked to: RC4 stream cipher