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Hello Magaly Montaña,
AxCrypt will encrypt anything that is stored as a file in your file system.
Best way to get the best answer is always to try! It’s free and even Premium is free for a month.
October 31, 2017 at 16:22 in reply to: How does Axcrypt validate passwords if the private keys are encrypted on server? #8148Hello Aaron,
You pose a very relevant question.
What we actually do on the server at this time, is to use the password manager encrypted XML as a vehicle to verify the password. We don’t actually decrypt or necessarily even keep a password manager file around, but instead in our handler for a sign in, we try to decrypt a “dummy” encrypted XML. If it succeeds, the password is verified. We’re not worried that this is a bad or insecure approach, but as mentioned in the original post, all security analysis is eased if complexity is reduced, so in the future we’ll be using the encrypted private key instead.
If you’re offline using a desktop app, we use the private key and we check to see if we can decrypt the private key AxCrypt-file in order to verify the password. We don’t actually decrypt it – we just verify that we can.
Exactly how this is done is explained in the technical documentation of the AxCrypt file format. Briefly: All AxCrypt-encrypted files are encrypted with a random key uniquely generated for every time a file is encrypted. This key, the “session key” as it were, is then encrypted using the NIST AES Key Wrap algorithm using your password (and if it’s a normal file, also with your public key). So what we do when we encrypt the private key is we encrypt it with a random key, then encrypt that key with the NIST AES Key Wrap, and to verify we just attempt to unwrap the session key. The key wrap is self-verifying, so we’ll know if we get the right session key, and thus if the password is correct.
So, in either case, we don’t actually need to decrypt the private key in order to verify the password.
Hello Jumi,
I don’t quite understand. If the file was on an external drive, and it was disconnected – that would certainly explain why the encrypted file is damaged. But not how the original file was deleted. If it was on the same disconnected drive (and AxCrypt via the UI does not support encrypting to a different drive), the original can’t even in theory become deleted by AxCrypt – the drive is no longer connected!
If you did re-connect the drive, and then manually deleted the orginal, that of course would explain it.
And, sorry, no – there’s no way we can extract 599Mb from 16Mb…. With try broken file you should be able to recover the first aprox 16Mb, but that’s only about 2.5%…
If you actually did manually delete the original, there may be a chance that a regular undelete utility can recover it from your drive, provided you’ve not used the drive much or at all since the deletion.
Hello khaldein,
Please see the previous responses in this thread.
Thank you, Marc!
Hello nobody,
From your account we can see that you seem to have been using the old AxCrypt, at least as far back as 2014. Then in August 2017, you upgraded to version 2, and then reset the password to your online account. On that same day, you also changed password once.
If the file was encrypted on or before August 4, 2017, the likely problem is that it was encrypted with a password different from what you thought. The old AxCrypt would happily allow you to use any number of passwords, including wrongly typed ones (as long as you did it consistenly twice in a row, which is easier to do than one might imagine). It just to avoid this that AxCrypt 2 works a little differently and only allows one, verified, password to encrypt files.
Check the ‘Last Modified’ date of the file in question.
Hello Jumi,
The problem here seems to be that the encrypted file was never properly encrypted fully – as you note, the encrypted file is much too small. Even though AxCrypt does perform compression, a .avi-file is already compressed and will not compress at all or very little. So the expected size of the encrypted file would be in the same range as the original file, i.e. 599Mb.
So, something must have happened to interrupt the encryption process. In this case, the original file should not have been wiped either. Is this perhaps a file that was encrypted some time ago, so whatever happened happened so long ago you don’t remember the details?
In any case – there’s no way to decrypt data that is simply not there. Sorry.
Hello Henry,
It can’t just “disappear”. Have you followed the instructions on https://forum.axcrypt.net/ on how to get started and install AxCrypt?
Can you send a screen shot of how a folder with encrypted files look after installation, and if it stops working again, can you send a screen shot of what error message your are getting when trying to open an encrypted file?
Hello Wagner,
Your problem has nothing to do with the versions of AxCrypt installed. It has to do with the fact that you (probably inadvertently) used a different or mistyped a password for the files you encrypted in June 2016.
Since you’re signed in with a password, and that does not work for these files, AxCrypt will ask for the file password. When you then enter the same password that you’re already signed in with, that won’t help and that’s what the message is for.
You need to remember what password you used in June 2016.
This is one of the reasons we’ve changed AxCrypt 2 to use a single, verified, password – to minimize the risk of this situation happening.
Hello Johan,
You’ll find the differences here: https://forum.axcrypt.net/pricing/ .
While we don’t support convenient offline Premium activation, it’s possible to do without too much problem. You use a connected computer to sign up and activate Premium, then import a plain text file with the license into the disconnected environment.
Hello Lili,
Unfortunately, if you do not know the password for an AxCrypt-encrypted file you cannot open it, even if you can sign in to the account. This is by design, it’s just this situation that AxCrypt is made for and it works like this even if you actually are the original owner of the file.
If you think you almost know the password, we have a simple software allowing you to try to find your password, and you can download the most recent version from https://account.axcrypt.net/Download/AxBruteForce.exe and read of how to use it at https://forum.axcrypt.net/axcrypt-brute-force/ . Please note that we cannot provide support beyond this.
Please check the FAQ at https://forum.axcrypt.net/support/faq/ for more information.
Thank you.
Can you please follow the instructions for steps 1 and 2 here: https://forum.axcrypt.net/blog/send-complete-error-report/ . (No need for step 3, the event log).
Send this as instructed to support att axcrypt dott net . Please refer to this conversation with me, and ask for it to be handled by me.
Hello Fred,
You can’t really use Task Manager to check for open files (but you can use Resource Monitor, CPU tab, Associated Handles). You can of course use Task Manager to check if a given process is really gone.
It may be the case that the file is in fact not actually open – but AxCrypt thinks it is. That’s why I’m asking for you to ensure you’re using the latest version, we have fixed some such issues.
What version of AxCrypt are you running?
Hello Fred,
Do ensure you’re running the most recent version of AxCrypt, and also ensure that you’ve really closed the application – it may not be enough to just close all documents.
Hello Anonymous,
If you do not remember the password to your account, you can always reset it. This is not a way to recover encrypted files! It’s only to allow you to sign in to the AxCrypt app and web. The new password will be used to encrypt new files.
The message you are seeing is telling you that you are signed in with a password that does not work to open the file in question, and in response to the password prompt you’re then getting – you’re entering the same password again.
When you are signed in, we try to use that password to open the file. If that does not work, we’ll ask you for the file password. In this situation it won’t help to try the same password again. We already did that. That’s what the error message is saying.
Unfortunately, if you do not know the password for an AxCrypt-encrypted file you cannot open it, even if you can sign in to the account. This is by design, it’s just this situation that AxCrypt is made for and it works like this even if you actually are the original owner of the file.
You need to remember or find out the password used to encrypt the file in question.
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