Simple program for adding a password-protection to Excel File

[ol...@acoss.fr]

POI-HSSF, as you know, unfortunatly doesn't support encryption, so you
cannot password-protect a sheet (by the way, JexcelAPI's do, and it works
fine !). So you have to add directly a password record using low-levels
API, which requires the knowledge to Excel records -that means lot of time.
So does anyone has a Java program able to add a password-protection to an
existing excel file, or some example source code (I've downloaded the
source code of POI) ?

Thank you.


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Change to encryption laws

[ac...@apache.org]

IANAL, but It is now okay to do encryption for the most part with open 
source software.  The law now allows a special exemption for open source 
code.  While there are quirks, I doubt implementing the Excel encryption 
would excite those quirks.  In the past we stayed out of it because we 
lacked the infrastructure to deal with silly export laws.  It would 
still be wise for US and non-US commiters to not "discuss" things about 
encryption together.  And write your congressman about how STUPID US 
encryption laws still are (do you REALLY think we EVER had a monopoly 
here) and how they do nothing more than HURT business in the US and "our 
trading partners".  Anyhow I remove my long standing veto here and 
welcome contributions in this area.

Presently SuperLink has no plans to do anything here because we have no 
funding for it and I find it unlikely that our average client will use 
such feature (we tend to have more OEM rather than IT) so this will have 
to be a community contribution more than likely.  Lastly, IIRC this is 
silly encryption not serious stuff anyhow so if you think it protects 
your data then google for "crack password protected excel file" and see 
if you still think that when you are done.  I know that security in this 
industry is more the sad state of perception vs reality, but it doesn't 
mean I can't try to convince people that real security is more than 
obfuscation.  (The existence of POI should prove that there are people 
in this world who read enough hex dumps to figure out your "security 
through obscurity" scheme).

... okay done with my soap box...lets not start a debating club ;-)

-Andy
-- 
Andrew C. Oliver
SuperLink Software, Inc.

Java to Excel using POI
http://www.superlinksoftware.com/services/poi
Commercial support including features added/implemented, bugs fixed.

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