Re: MDE/Blank forms

Larry Linson wrote:

Lyle and I are agreeing so much these days that it scares me a little that one of us may be experiencing "abberrant thinking". I'd say what he calls his "un-expert advice" is right on target.

If you won a legal case against that developer, could you actually get damages? Could you get enough damages to pay a competent person to re-create the application and pay your legal fees? If not, I'd expect competent legal counsel would advise you to just cancel his contract, forget him/her for now, and avoid recommending him/her to anyone else in the future.

I have rarely been much concerned with Access' security over the years, except for using server database security to protect the user's data, because the vast majority of Access applications are such that a competent developer can observe the application being run (which you apparently can do) and re-create it in just a fraction of the original development time. (As Lyle pointed out.)

I don't have a particular package to recommend, but software to crack VBA passwords is all over the Internet -- some fee, some free. There's even a reliable, free software package that will give you the necessary owner's information to break into a database that has full access security applied and make it your own with full rights and access, and you don't even have to have the workgroup file.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP


Would cracking the password actually help? The OP states that the MDE works fine but in the MDB the forms are blank and the only basic code to resize the form. How would they know that unless they could get into the MDB? "but the corresponding front end mdb file has
all the forms blank and doesn't seem to have any code behind them,
except for some some basic code that seems to set the screen size,"...

Is it the MDW password he's missing or is it the password one can set on VBA code modules? If the forms are blank, what would having the code do as a benefit?





"lyle fairfield" <lylefa1r@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:Xns9BCCEFEF295C1lylefa1r@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

John von Colditz <johnvonc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:0Ljul.107657
$fM1.13512@xxxxxxxxxxxx:


The department that uses this program wants to add more
functionalities.The same deveoper is trying to help us out with this
project through a contract. BUt we dont seem have the forms and code,
the developer has a copy of the database, but has protected the code
using VBA project with a password that was generated using a random
password generator that they no longer remember.

My un-expert advice is:

1. Ditch the developer;
2. Break the VBA project password, (it's a trivial task), or hire someone
to do it, or buy a third party tool that someone can verify actually works;
As far as the mde goes it's only the actual code syntax that is missing; if
you know what it does any reasonably capable developer can reproduce it.
3. The complexity of the password has zip to do with breaking it unless
you're guessing or using brute force. TTBOMR the password is saved at a
certain place toward the beginning of the file. It used to be saved as ANSI
but now I believe it's unicode. So take a new mdb. Copy it. In the copy
create a maximum length VBA Project password, something like "aaaaaa..."
would be good, "0000000..." might be better.. Do a binary file compare on
the two files. Note the bytes that are different. Do an XOR on these with
the bytes from the password. PRESTO, that's the key. I haven't looked at
this recently so it's possible it's been changed in later versions of
Access but that's the way it used to work.
Passwords are just nonsense. They provide zero security and a totally
unwarranted "oh that's safe" complacency.

PS, if the developer protected it with a password and lost the password
then it's probably 99.44% crap. You're likely to be way better off just
starting all over again. This time find someone who has a clue.

--
lyle fairfield

- The man who told us that Canada wouldn't go there has now told us that
Canada will be the first to come back. How reassuring!



.

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