Microsoft Office encryption (legacy)
E111853
Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) refers to the older, less secure document protection system in early Office versions that relied on the RC4 stream cipher and is now considered cryptographically weak.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T957489 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) Context triple: [RC4, usedIn, Microsoft Office encryption (legacy)]
-
A.
S/MIME
S/MIME is a widely used standard for secure email that provides encryption and digital signatures using public key cryptography.
-
B.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a cloud-based email and collaboration security solution that protects Microsoft 365 users from phishing, malware, and other advanced threats.
-
C.
KMS
KMS is the Dutch abbreviation for the Royal Military Academy in Belgium, the institution responsible for training officers for the Belgian Armed Forces.
-
D.
Transparent Data Encryption
Transparent Data Encryption is a database security feature that encrypts data at rest by automatically encrypting database files and backups to protect against unauthorized access to stored data.
-
E.
Outlook
Outlook is Microsoft’s email and personal information management application that provides integrated email, calendar, contacts, and task functionality for individuals and organizations.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) Target entity description: Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) refers to the older, less secure document protection system in early Office versions that relied on the RC4 stream cipher and is now considered cryptographically weak.
-
A.
S/MIME
S/MIME is a widely used standard for secure email that provides encryption and digital signatures using public key cryptography.
-
B.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a cloud-based email and collaboration security solution that protects Microsoft 365 users from phishing, malware, and other advanced threats.
-
C.
KMS
KMS is the Dutch abbreviation for the Royal Military Academy in Belgium, the institution responsible for training officers for the Belgian Armed Forces.
-
D.
Transparent Data Encryption
Transparent Data Encryption is a database security feature that encrypts data at rest by automatically encrypting database files and backups to protect against unauthorized access to stored data.
-
E.
Outlook
Outlook is Microsoft’s email and personal information management application that provides integrated email, calendar, contacts, and task functionality for individuals and organizations.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (41)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
cryptographic system
ⓘ
document protection mechanism ⓘ |
| appliesToFormat |
.doc
ⓘ
.ppt ⓘ .xls ⓘ |
| attackFeasibility | practical password recovery with modern hardware ⓘ |
| cipherType | stream cipher ⓘ |
| configuration | user-supplied password only ⓘ |
| designGoal | prevent casual access to documents ⓘ |
| documentation | described in reverse-engineered security analyses ⓘ |
| integrityProtection | limited or absent cryptographic integrity ⓘ |
| keyDerivation | weak password-based key derivation ⓘ |
| keyManagement | password-derived symmetric key ⓘ |
| notDesignedFor | strong cryptographic confidentiality ⓘ |
| passwordSpace | limited effective key space ⓘ |
| primaryCipher | RC4 ⓘ |
| provides | password protection for documents ⓘ |
| recommendation | do not use for sensitive data ⓘ |
| replacedBy |
Office 2007+ AES-based encryption
ⓘ
Office Open XML (ECMA-376) ⓘ
surface form:
Office Open XML ECMA-376 / ISO/IEC 29500 encryption
|
| securityCommunityView |
broken
ⓘ
insecure by modern standards ⓘ |
| securityStatus |
cryptographically weak
ⓘ
deprecated ⓘ |
| standardizationStatus | proprietary Microsoft scheme ⓘ |
| statusInModernOffice | legacy compatibility only ⓘ |
| usedInComponent |
Excel
ⓘ
surface form:
Microsoft Excel
PowerPoint ⓘ
surface form:
Microsoft PowerPoint
Word ⓘ
surface form:
Microsoft Word
|
| usedInProduct | Microsoft Office ⓘ |
| usedInVersion |
Microsoft Office
ⓘ
surface form:
Microsoft Office 2000
Office 2003 ⓘ
surface form:
Microsoft Office 2003
Microsoft Office 97 ⓘ Microsoft Office XP ⓘ |
| usesHashFunction | weak or outdated hashing for key derivation ⓘ |
| vulnerability |
inadequate use of RC4
ⓘ
lack of modern integrity protection ⓘ susceptible to brute-force attacks ⓘ susceptible to dictionary attacks ⓘ susceptible to key recovery attacks ⓘ weak key derivation from passwords ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) Description of subject: Microsoft Office encryption (legacy) refers to the older, less secure document protection system in early Office versions that relied on the RC4 stream cipher and is now considered cryptographically weak.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
subject surface form:
RC4