Decrypting MSWord documents

I have a large subset of encrypted word documents which i need to process with out knowing the encryption password.

From looking around online, it seems that there are several services which strip the encryption from a file. This is a perfect solution for my needs, but due to security/privacy reasons, i can't send the files to a 3rd party to be decrypted.

Can any one help me with any resources to point me in the right direction for removing encryption from office documents?

Edit For those with concerns on legality. While you have no reason to trust me, this question relates to working with conversion of legacy data into new systems, and is with in legal/moral bounds what the of the owne开发者_高级运维r of the data wants done to it.

First and foremost, i would like to say i am very disappointed with the response i got to my question. Is my questions questionable in morality? Yeah it might be, but i am not asking for anything that isn't already out on the web.

For anyone else who finds themselves in the same predicament, here are some good starting points:

• BlackHat-EU-2010-Filiol-Office-Encryption-slides.pdf
• Office File Formats

As for my work on this, the linked document doesn't produce a viable solution in my case. We decided to shift our entry point to reading the heap for the specific application.

"while the hospitals hired us for the processing of their data, their IT departments are less then competent to provide us with all the required information on the storage of their data."

If you've got HIPPA privacy concerns with data that keeps you from outsourcing the removal of document protection, you'll need to get past the security with the internal IT resources who, if competent enough to add protection, should be prepared to bypass it.