June 30, 2016
Why you should avoid Self-Decrypting Files
AxCrypt 2 no longer supports a feature called Self Decrypting Files that was supported in AxCrypt 1.x. What’s a Self Decrypting File? It’s a two things in one: It’s a self-contained executable program (a .exe), with secured data (a .axx file) embedded or appended to it. When the recipient gets the Self Decrypting File, (s)he then […]
June 16, 2016
Encryption and biometrics
There are several fundamental problems with using biometrics such as fingerprints, facial recognition etc for authentication. It’s even more problematic when encryption is involved. There are two major problems with using biometrics for authentication. If there is no other human actually watching you ‘apply’ the biometric, it’s really hard to ensure that the biometric is […]
June 15, 2016
Encryption vs. Authentication
A source of common confusion is the difference between encryption and access control, and what the AxCrypt 2 Sign In is about. Access Control Access control is when a given identity is given permissions by a higher authority (is authorized) to perform actions such as reading a file. For access control to work, we need authentication […]
June 1, 2016
Leaving your computer with AxCrypt running
When you use AxCrypt 2, first you have to “sign in” – after the first time, that’s just entering your password. Since AxCrypt is a password based file encryption application, that makes sense. Even if the password is really the only thing that’s required to decrypt a file, we decided to use the “sign in” […]
May 31, 2016
Use of different passwords considered harmful
In the previous version of AxCrypt, it was sometimes necessary to use different passwords for different files. This happened when files were shared between different persons. Obviously you then needed to share the password as well, but you do not want to share your own password. So, for each set of persons sharing a file, […]