150 WORD ARTICLE

The Lengths Engineers Will Go To [XLIII]

Or… How an engineer will search spend a lot of time searching for a solution

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The Locked Word Doc

Way back in 2003 — Microsoft Word was my standard editor…

I wrote a sitcom…

I password protected it (I would say that it was more out of embarrassment than trying to protect it from people who would want to steal my ideas).

I forgot the password…

This is what I did

• Downloaded a Windows IE Testing VM
• Downloaded VBA Studio
• Downloaded a trial of Microsoft Word
• Fiddled around in VBA

This didn’t work, so I

• Cloned a public Repo off GitHub
• Compiled the code ./configure && make
• Downloaded a word list
• Cracked the password
• Opened the file with the password

The password was not a secure one — and I could have guessed it in 10 seconds. Instead, I spent 4 hours searching for a solution.