Microsoft Office 2013 Hash

What is Microsoft Office 2013?

The Microsoft Office 2013 hash format refers to a proprietary cryptographic scheme originally introduced in the 2013 iteration of Microsoft’s Office suite to secure user credentials and file integrity checks within the Office 365 ecosystem. Structurally, it employs a hybrid approach combining a truncated SHA-1 hash (128-bit output) with a custom obfuscation layer, including a 32-bit salt derived from the user’s domain account SID and a 64-bit timestamp embedded in the final hash. This format was primarily designed for lightweight authentication in Active Directory environments, where performance and compatibility with legacy systems were prioritized over cryptographic rigor. The hash is stored in plaintext within Office configuration files (e.g., `user.xml` or registry hives) and serves dual purposes: validating user sessions and verifying the integrity of Office components against tampering. However, its design lacked formal standardization, relying instead on undocumented internal protocols, which contributed to its eventual deprecation in favor of modern protocols like OAuth 2.0 and Kerberos.

The Microsoft Office 2013 hash format is highly vulnerable to cracking due to its reliance on an inherently weak cryptographic foundation—SHA-1—whose collision resistance has been repeatedly compromised since 2005. The absence of a per-password salt (only a domain-wide SID-derived salt is used) enables efficient rainbow table attacks, as identical salts for different users create predictable hash patterns. Additionally, the 128-bit truncated output space is susceptible to brute-force cracking when combined with GPU-accelerated tools like Hashcat, which can achieve billions of hashes per second. The format’s reliance on static timestamps further reduces entropy, as repeated hashing of the same salt+timestamp pairs (e.g., during automated login sessions) creates exploitable patterns. Finally, the lack of iteration counts or key stretching in the hashing process allows modern hardware to evaluate candidate passwords at near-linear speeds, rendering the scheme effectively broken for password recovery within hours or days using distributed computing resources.

Identifying Microsoft Office 2013 Hashes

Identifying a hash blindly is often difficult because multiple algorithms can output strings of the exact same length. For example, a standard 32-character hexadecimal string could be MD5, NTLM, MD4, or LM. To definitively identify Microsoft Office 2013, security researchers analyze the hash against a strict regular expression (regex) signature (shown above) to find structural matches.

How to Crack Microsoft Office 2013

If you need to recover the plaintext password for a Microsoft Office 2013 hash during a penetration test or forensics investigation, you must supply the correct module ID to your cracking software. Use the exact commands provided at the top of this page to target the hash successfully.