Able to bypass password protection on document

B

BenSmith

Hello,

I have stumbled across a slightly unusual issue regarding security on Word
documents and haven't been able to find any online information about it
(although I could just be looking in the wrong pace of course, so apologies
if this has already been reported).

With any word document (new or existing), if I choose to "Save As" and add a
"Password to modify" from the General Options screen, this has the expected
outcome of prompting for a password when launched directly or through a
hyperlink.

I have found that this can be bypassed however, if the document path is
copied into the IE address bar and launched from there. This appears to
bypass any prompts for the modify password and allows you to edit and save
the document under the same name/location. You can then re-open the same
document through a different method and you are again prompted for a password.

Interestingly, if I also enable "Password to open", this does prompt for a
password, regardless of the method used to open the document.

This suggests that the problem is a combination of setting only the
"Password to modify" option and launching to document through IE.

Has anyone seen this before? Is it a known issue or should I be logging
this somewhere?

The platform is a Windows XP PC (with IE7) and MS Office 2007 Professional
Plus MSDN, all are fully patched. This has also been replicated on different
PCs with different documents. I have also tried saving as *.doc & *.docx
with no difference noticed.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top