Excel 2007 : Excel 2007 VBA Security

**nowonda** · 04-18-2009, 08:42 AM

Hi all,

I'm curious about the level of protection offered by the VBA Project password in Excel 2007. Is it safe for me to assume the password will be hard to crack, if its length is reasonable (>20 chars) and if the characters set is also fairly big (~100 of them)? Or at least harded to crack than in previous versions of Excel, thus making my VBA code harder to access and modify/copy? I'm talking about reasonably dedicated attemps to break the password, so not about NSA computing power, but also not about the typical google addict who searches "VBA password crack" and then tries a moderately priced software solution for this kinda thing.

So is it safe at least against "normal" password cracks out there? On the same subject, do you have some tips about how to make the access to the VBA code in an Excel 2007 application harder? I'm only worried about the VBA code, the excel file itself is left unprotected (is this an issue?)

Thanks!

**Andy Pope** · 04-18-2009, 10:59 AM

I can not find anything that would suggest that a password protected project is any more secure in 2007 compared to earlier versions.

**nowonda** · 04-19-2009, 01:09 PM

According to one site that specializes in this kinda stuff that Excel 2007 VBA code is actually encrypted when protecting it with a password, which was not the case prior to MSO 2007, hence making it harder to get access to the code.

I was curious if anyone else knew some reliable info about this.

And I'm gonna reitterate my question about other ways to protect your VBA code - anyone has some tips about this? Some tools/methods that can be used?

Thanks!