Excel VBA Password via Hex Editor

Question

I have used the  Hex Editor to modify DPB to DPx  many times in the past to bypass VBA project security on my old Excel VBA projects   xls   so I definitely know how to do it and know that I can do it   However I have just tried to do it yesterday and found that it no longer seems to work   I tried using both Excel 2011  Mac  and Excel 2003  Windows  and in both cases  I got the same behaviour   Opening the VBA editor gave a message saying that the project is corrupted and that the project will be removed  The VBA editor then opens and  sure enough  all VBA is stripped out from modules and worksheets   I have tried this method  Is there a way to crack the password on an Excel VBA Project   ie  creating a spreadsheet with a known password and then copying across the relevant fields   But find that the length of the  GC  key created on my  dummy  spreadsheet is shorter than the  GC  key on the spreadsheet that I am wishing to access  the  target    I had read elsewhere that in cases where the  target  keys were longer  you could pad the  dummy  keys to the same length but there is nothing i can find to say what to do in the reverse case   So - my questions  s     Is anyone aware if a patch has been applied that makes the  hex editor  approach invalid  Can anyone help with what to do when the dummy keys are longer than the target keys  Can anyone else provide any updated onsite into this issue    EDIT Having now solved this  to some degree  i thought i d add a summary here   I HAVE NOT been able to get this to work on Mac Excel 2011   Something about changing the file from filname xlsm to fielname zip and back again results in a corrupted excel file which Excel 2011 refuses to recognise   I DID manage to get this to work on an old windows machine  XP Excel 2007  by modifying the  xlsm file name to  zip  editing the DPB  AND GC  values in the vbaproject bin file with a hex editor then saving this in the  zip file before renaming the  zip back to xlsm   I used the  test  example given by Ricko at the bottom and it worked with ONE CAVEAT - i had to  pad  out my GC value to make it that same length as the original one in my file   ORIGINAL        GC  0F0DA36FAF938494849484  NEW    TEST     GC  BAB816BBF4BCF4BCF4    from Ricko below  NEW    TEST     GC  BAB816BBF4BCF4BCF40000    what i used and what worked

User · Accepted Answer

I have your answer  as I just had the same problem today   Someone made a working vba code that changes the vba protection password to  macro   for all excel files  including  xlsm  2007  versions   You can see how it works by browsing his code   This is the guy s blog  http   lbeliarl blogspot com 2014 03 excel-removing-password-from-vba html Here s the file that does the work  https   docs google com file d 0B6sFi5sSqEKbLUIwUTVhY3lWZE0 edit  Pasted from a previous post from his blog   For Excel 2007 2010   xlsm  files do following steps    Create a new  xlsm file  In the VBA part  set a simple password  for instance  macro    Save the file and exit  Change file extention to   zip   open it by any archiver program  Find the file   vbaProject bin   in  xl  folder   Extract it from archive  Open the file you just extracted with a hex editor  Find and copy the value from parameter DPB  value in quotation mark   example      DPB  282A84CBA1CBA1345FCCB154E20721DE77F7D2378D0EAC90427A22021A46E9CE6F17188A     This value generated for  macro  password  You can use this DPB value to skip steps 1-8  Do steps 4-7 for file with unknown password  file you want to unlock   Change DBP value in this file on value that you have copied in step 8           If copied value is shorter than in encrypted file you should populate missing characters with 0  zero   If value is longer - that is not a problem  paste it as is       Save the  vbaProject bin  file and exit from hex editor  Replace existing  vbaProject bin  file with modified one  Change extention from   zip  back to   xlsm  Now  open the excel file you need to see the VBA code in  The password for the VBA code will simply be macro  as in the example I m showing here

User · Answer

Open xls file with a hex editor  Search for DPB Replace DPB to DPx Save file  Open file in Excel  Click  Yes  if you get any message box  Set new password from VBA Project Properties  Close and open again file  then type your new password to unprotect    Check http   blog getspool com 396 best-vba-password-recovery-cracker-tool-remove

User · Answer

If you deal with  xlsm file instead of  xls you can use the old method  I was trying to modify vbaProject bin in  xlsm several times using DBP- gt DBx method by it didn t work  also changing value of DBP didn t  So I was very suprised that following worked   1  Save  xlsm as  xls  2  Use DBP- gt DBx method on  xls  3  Unfortunately some erros may occur when using modified  xls file  I had to save  xls as  xlsx and add modules  then save as  xlsm

User · Answer

New version  now you also have the GC  try to replace both DPB and GC with those   DPB  DBD9775A4B774B77B4894C77DFE8FE6D2CCEB951E8045C2AB7CA507D8F3AC7E3A7F59012A2  GC  BAB816BBF4BCF4BCF4    password will be  test

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