Passware rolls out instant decryption of MS Office 2010 documents

Passware Kit Forensic

Password recovery, decryption and electronic evidence discovery software provider Passware, Inc., has released its Passware Kit Forensic v11.7, that includes live memory analysis and subsequent decryption of MS Word or Excel 2007-2010 files.

In addition, the new version instantly decrypts PGP Whole Disk Encrypted volumes and recovers passwords for Apple disk images, said the company.

The kit is aimed at computer forensics, law enforcement organizations, government agencies, and private investigators, according to Passware, whose customers include Fortune 100 companies and various US federal and state agencies, like the IRS, U.S. Army, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Postal Service, Secret Service, Senate, and Supreme Court

The new version of Passware Kit Forensic v11.7, also instantly decrypts PGP Whole Disk Encrypted volumes and recovers passwords for Apple disk images, said the company.

With the release of MS Office 2007, Microsoft changed its encryption algorithm to AES, which made instant calculation of an encryption key impossible. "Until now, there had been no solution available commercially to crack MS Office 2007-2010 encryption in predictable time. Brute-force attack was the only method available," said Dmitry Sumin, president, Passware, Inc. "With our focus on live memory analysis, which makes instant recovery of MS Office encryption keys and the ability to use them to decrypt the documents possible, we continue to pioneer decrypting MS Office documents."

The latest version of Passware Kit Forensic includes live memory acquisition over FireWire and subsequent recovery of a file's encryption key – regardless of the password length and complexity. This method works if the target MS Word/Excel file was open on a seized computer at the time of its memory acquisition, or when the computer last went into 'sleep' mode.

Other memory analysis options provided by Passware include decryption of BitLocker, TrueCrypt, PGP, and Mac FileVault 2 hard disk images, and recovery of Mac user login passwords.