Activ Ebook security - help needed

[zaibatsu]

This topic is a last resort, and a plee for help! I've exhausted most other channels, and some forum members.

I'll try to be as concise as possible, but some details won't be revealed so we can keep this theoretical ;) Right, I was wondering if it was possible to get around a password on an "Activ E-book" file. The reason for this is that as soon as someone was able to get the password, they could set the file to print (as that option is enabled), and use adobe to create a PDF from it. This would then allow you to easily distribute the file, as I think there is a program that allows the original creators to lock any activ ebook file remotely if they suspect you've been sharing it around. Let's just say people could gain access to very interesting books if they could get round the password, but obviously it would be applied to files they wrote, and then forgot the password...

Any help at all regarding this would be useful, but bear in mind it isn't something like an Adobe Ebook which has many weaknesses. And Jelly, check your email more often!

[wrench352]

I would have emailed you if I could have as I got in trouble for asking about this kind of thing before.There are many different password recovery programs at cnet.com downloads.You might find what your looking for there.

[zaibatsu]

IIRC you asked about PDFs - this is in no way connected to PDFs, this is to do with the Activ Ebook file format. Yes, PDFs and the Adobe Ebook format is easy to crack, but that's something else. No discussion of PDF cracking will be allowed in this topic - the info's out there, you can find it in a couple of seconds on google.

[wrench352]

Sorry not familiar with the format.Thought you meant Adobe.Activ seems like a tough nut to crack.What about these "compilers" I see.
4.22 has a key recovery for registered users,dont know if this will help-
http://www.ebookcompiler.com/download.html
Let me know how this works

[FragmentedSanity]

Lo all :)
I was just wondering if anyone had made any progress on this subject. I have been trying to find way to do this for a while now.
http://hppublish.com/ is a site with a bunch of ebooks that I atleast find interesting. I have a few older files from the same place, which I can read by just opening it after the start page - or going through the menu to find a table of contents or some other way to get to the info, but the new files dont work that way anymore. Some are downloadable by PDF tho - and that is easy enough to crack - it just takes time.

Surely there is a way, I suppose that there just hasnt been enough interest in this format to warant anyone with the knowhow actually making a crack. There must be some member with the skills - or the connections to make this happen. I really doubt Zaibatsu would be asking this if there wasnt some nifty info just currently out of reach, given what he's already made available over the years.
FS

[nbk2000]

There are screen-shot programs that can do OCR of anything visible on the screen. Zaibatsu, you may wish to find one of these programs and give it a try.

[zaibatsu]

Fragmented Sanity:

Yes, you can download the PDF, that would be very easy to crack, but you first have to get past the zip password. I've tried bruteforcing it up to 8 characters long consisting of lower and uppercase letters, symbols, numbers and spaces, but no luck, tried using a wordlist etc. I did try to get round it by going onto the page of contents and trying to get to the sections through that, but unfortunately it asks for a password. Tried to get it to print, but it'll only print a couple of pages that you can view anyway. Even downloaded the Activ Ebook program to try and get into it, but that's difficult to understand as it is.

NBK:
I had a similar idea, but you can't even view the pages. If you can break the password, you are permitted to print the document. I don't like the format (Activ Ebook) as there are addons that allow you to lock copies of the book (when in Activ Ebook format) remotely, and I don't like the idea of anything interferring with my computer from affar. I think the ebooks are searchable too, so as soon as the password has been removed you can just print straight to Adobe and end up with a fairly small file.

All:
Unfortunately there hasn't been time recently to investigate this further, but it seems there are two options: break the zip password or the activ ebooks.

[nbk2000]

There are ZIP password attack programs that can distibute the attack across many computers. If 50 people downloaded the files, and used the same attack program, that'd reduce the time to 1/50th of what it would take one computer to do the task.

I wonder if they're foolish enough to use the same password for different files? Any idea on what the maximum password length is on a ZIP?

Also, if the sample pages are from the book, perhaps a known plaintext attack would be possible, instead of bruteforcing it.