Get The Password for a Quickbooks QBW File

A C Program to Recover Your Quickbooks Pro 5.0 File

Sure it's old, but I will share it with the world. It works with Quickbooks 5.0. The password is stored at offset 7635 and is "scrambled" by swapping nibbles. You can compile this using the GNU C compiler on almost linux distro.  Then bring your QB file over and run this little program to expose your password.

/* -*-C-*-
****************************************************************************
***
*
* File:         get-qb-pw.c
* RCS:          $Id: $
* Description:  get the "quick books pro" password
* Author:       Eric Blossom
* Created:      Tue Aug 18 14:09:30 1998
* Modified:     Tue Aug 18 17:39:22 1998 (eric) eb@starium.com
* Language:     C
* Package:      N/A
* Status:       Experimental (Do Not Distribute)
*
****************************************************************************
***
*/

/* * This has been tested only on QuickBooks Pro version 5.0
 */

#include <stdio.h>

main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  FILE          *fp;
  int           i;
  unsigned char raw[10];

  if (argc != 2){
    fprintf (stderr, "usage: get-qb-pw filename\n");
    exit (1);
  }

  if ((fp = fopen (argv[1], "rb")) == 0){
    perror (argv[0]);
    exit (1);
  }


  if (fseek (fp, 7635, SEEK_SET) != 0){
    perror ("fseek failed");
    exit (1);
  }

  if (fread (raw, 1, 10, fp) != 10){
    perror ("fread failed");
    exit (1);
  }

  for (i = 9; i >= 0; i--){
    int         t;

    if (raw[i] == 0)
      continue;

    t = ((raw[i] & 0xf) << 4) | ((raw[i] >> 4)  & 0xf); /* swap nybbles */
    putchar (-t + 255);
  }

  putchar ('\n');
}