Paper 2005/007
The Misuse of RC4 in Microsoft Word and Excel
Hongjun Wu
Abstract
In this report, we point out a serious security flaw in Microsoft Word and Excel. The stream cipher RC4 with key length up to 128 bits is used in Microsoft Word and Excel to protect the documents. But when an encrypted document gets modified and saved, the initialization vector remains the same and thus the same keystream generated from RC4 is applied to encrypt the different versions of that document. The consequence is disastrous since a lot of information of the document could be recovered easily.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
PS
- Category
- Applications
- Publication info
- Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
- Keywords
- Microsoft WordExcelEncryptionRC4Initialization Vector
- Contact author(s)
- hongjun @ i2r a-star edu sg
- History
- 2005-01-11: received
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2005/007
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2005/007,
author = {Hongjun Wu},
title = {The Misuse of {RC4} in Microsoft Word and Excel},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2005/007},
year = {2005},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2005/007}
}
