RE: Recovering from broken password (bug 125431)

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

Here's my understanding of *some*cases* of this problem based on what we now 
know about the cases that are reported and a patch that is being tested:

The user profile has nothing to do with this problem, and reinstalling AOO 
4.1.2 will not help either.

The problem is with a dependency on the platform.  Going back to an older 
version of AOO should not work either, because the change is not in AOO but in 
the updated OS configuration.  It takes an update to AOO to adjust for the 
changed dependency.  (It is not clear whether there is a manual workaround that 
can be used in the meantime.)

The only immediate solution, pending an updated AOO release, is to take the 
file to an older OS or one that does not have the problem (e.g, on Windows) 
long enough to decrypt the file.  Alternatively, the user could install the 
latest release of LibreOffice to see if that overcomes this problem.

This does not apply to problems of lost or incorrect passwords.  When the 
password is lost, there is generally no way to decrypt the file on any 
configuration of OpenOffice.  There are some utilities that can discover the 
password if it is not very secure against being guessed.  The better the 
password's random structure and length, the less likely there is a way to 
decrypt the file.

There is some technical discussion here on the dev@ list, involving the 
dependency on NSS.

 - Dennis


> -Original Message-
> From: Rory O'Farrell [mailto:ofarr...@iol.ie]
> Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 10:19
> To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
> Cc: F C. Costero <fjcc.apa...@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Recovering from broken password (bug 125431)
> 
> On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 11:03:48 -0700
> "F C. Costero" <fjcc.apa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > We get questions on the forum about how to access a document that no
> longer
> > accepts the encryption password. I assume some of these are due to the
> > broken NSS issue #125431. I skimmed through the comments on bugzilla
> and
> > did not see a definitive way to fix the problem. I"m sorry if I missed
> it.
> > What should we tell users to do if we conclude they have this problem?
> > Thank you!
> > Francis
> 
> I saw this query on the Forum and was going to reply to suggest deleting
> or renaming the user profile; If that doesn't work it is worth trying on
> another Mac system, to see if the problem is o.s. specific and also on
> another o.s. It may be a report disguising some form of the corrupt file
> problem.  Also worth asking of the affected system can save a new trial
> passworded file and properly reopen it, to define whether the problem is
> specific to that file, or specific to that system.
> 
> Rory
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Rory O'Farrell <ofarr...@iol.ie>
> 
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Re: Recovering from broken password (bug 125431)

[Rory O'Farrell]

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 11:03:48 -0700
"F C. Costero"  wrote:

> We get questions on the forum about how to access a document that no longer
> accepts the encryption password. I assume some of these are due to the
> broken NSS issue #125431. I skimmed through the comments on bugzilla and
> did not see a definitive way to fix the problem. I"m sorry if I missed it.
> What should we tell users to do if we conclude they have this problem?
> Thank you!
> Francis

I saw this query on the Forum and was going to reply to suggest deleting or 
renaming the user profile; If that doesn't work it is worth trying on another 
Mac system, to see if the problem is o.s. specific and also on another o.s. It 
may be a report disguising some form of the corrupt file problem.  Also worth 
asking of the affected system can save a new trial passworded file and properly 
reopen it, to define whether the problem is specific to that file, or specific 
to that system.

Rory



-- 
Rory O'Farrell 

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