# Unlock Excel
A small command-line utility to read or remove the VBA protection on Excel files.
It works on all of:
- xls: Excel 97-2003 Workbooks
- xlsm: Excel Macro-Enabled Workbooks
- xlsb: Excel Binary Workbooks
It will not work with xlsx files since, by definition, they do not include any VBA.
This is pretty rough and ready, so feel free to report any issues.
## Usage
To read the protection on a file:
`$ ./unlock_excel read FILENAME`
Usually the password, if there is one, will be an SHA1 hash of the password plus a
random salt. Both the hash result and the salt will be printed out. These can be
input into password recovery tools such as [hashcat](https://hashcat.net/hashcat/)
or [John the Ripper](https://www.openwall.com/john/) to decrypt the password
Optionally you can pass the `-d` flag to get the application to try to decrypt
against a list of 1.7 million common passwords:
`$ ./unlock_excel read -d FILENAME`
To remove protection on a file:
`$ ./unlock_excel remove FILENAME`
By default, this will be saved to a copy of the original file with '_unlocked'
appended to the name. If you wish you update the file in place, pass the `-i`
flag:
`$ ./unlock_excel remove -i FILENAME`
## Credits
Inspiration for writing this is due to [Didier Stevens](https://blog.didierstevens.com/2020/07/20/cracking-vba-project-passwords/).
He doesn't link to the code in that post, but it can be found [here](https://github.com/DidierStevens/DidierStevensSuite/blob/master/plugin_vbaproject.py)
## Roadmap
The following is a list of things that may get added in the future:
- Better output format. The current output is a little raw, I've not given it much thought
- Remove sheet protection as well. It's not too hard to do
- Improve the internal password decryption. For one thing we could use Rayon to
parallelise the un-hashing attempts and try more options. Feels like we're
re-inventing password cracking software, which is likely not the way to go
for this little utility
## WARNING
This utility is designed only to give the user access to files that they already
have the rights to read and edit. For example, gaining access to an old file at
work for which the password has been lost.
USE OF THIS UTILITY TO BREAK ANY LAWS IS NOT CONDONED