Welcome to Jackcess Encrypt

Encryption Support for Jackcess

Jackcess Encrypt is an add-on library for Jackcess, the pure Java API for Microsoft Access databases. It adds support for reading and writing encrypted/password-protected .mdb, .accdb and Microsoft Money (.mny) files.

Jackcess itself deliberately ships without this functionality — the encryption schemes used by Access and Money rely on cryptographic primitives that are more sensibly maintained in a separate module with its own dependency on Bouncy Castle. This project supplies that missing piece as a CodecProvider that plugs directly into Jackcess.

Jackcess Encrypt is not an application. There is no GUI. It's a library, intended for other developers to build Java applications on top of Jackcess.

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✨ Key Features

• Drop-in Codec: Implements Jackcess's CodecProvider SPI — plug it into DatabaseBuilder and encrypted files just open.

• Broad Format Coverage: Supports classic Jet/MSISAM RC4 obfuscation, the RC4 CryptoAPI and binary document RC4 schemes, as well as modern Office/ECMA-376 standard and agile encryption (AES) used by .accdb. Extensible ("external provider") encryption is not supported, as it relies on arbitrary third-party providers.

• Microsoft Money Support: Reads password-protected and unprotected Money (.mny) files.

• Flexible Password Retrieval: Provide a password directly, or supply it lazily via a Supplier<String> / PasswordCallback, invoked only if the file actually requires one.

 

🛠 Tech Stack & Dependencies

• Java Version: 11 or higher at runtime (LTS versions like Java 17 and 21 are fully supported and tested). Building the project itself requires JDK 17 or higher.

• Main Dependencies:

  • Jackcess (the base library this project extends)
  • Bouncy Castle (bcprov-jdk18on, for the underlying cryptographic primitives)

• Build Tool: Maven

• Code Quality: Enforced via Checkstyle and PMD.

 

📦 Installation

Add Jackcess Encrypt alongside Jackcess itself.

Maven (pom.xml)

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.spannm</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackcess</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.7</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.spannm</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackcess-encrypt</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.6</version>
</dependency>

Gradle (Groovy / build.gradle)

implementation 'io.github.spannm:jackcess:5.1.7'
implementation 'io.github.spannm:jackcess-encrypt:5.1.6'

🚦 Usage Example

Register a CryptCodecProvider on the DatabaseBuilder before opening an encrypted database:

import io.github.spannm.jackcess.*;
import io.github.spannm.jackcess.encrypt.CryptCodecProvider;

import java.io.File;

try (Database db = new DatabaseBuilder()
        .withFile(new File("encrypted.accdb"))
        .withCodecProvider(new CryptCodecProvider("myPassword"))
        .open()) {

    Table table = db.getTable("friends");
    for (Row row : table) {
        System.out.println("Friend Name: " + row.get("name"));
    }
}

Not every "encrypted" Access file actually requires a password — many older formats merely obfuscate the data with a key stored in the file itself. In that case CryptCodecProvider works without any password at all.

❤️ Origin & Maintenance

This project was forked from the original Jackcess Encrypt project on SourceForge, and is maintained as a companion to Jackcess — the two projects are versioned and released in lockstep.

⚖️ License

Jackcess Encrypt is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE.txt for details.

 

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