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Hello murat,
I am very sorry to hear that you apparently are the victim of a hacker ransom attack against your files.
However, please understand that AxCrypt is just a tool that is used by millions of legitimate users for good purposes. I am very sad that a hacker has chosen AxCrypt as the tool to perform the ransom attacks.
Unfortunately in this case, AxCrypt is based on strong encryption, and it is generally not possible to crack the encryption.
What you must do is contact your local police, and have them follow the money and Internet trail to the hacker. Since others appear to be in the same situation, you may want to contact media in order to make this problem more widely known, and also gain the possibility of a group action of all the victims against the hacker.
We cannot help, we are in no way involved, and there is no way to open the files without the passphrase used.
Please read http://blog.axantum.com/2012/07/axcrypt-used-for-ransom-attacks.html for a longer discussion of what I know about this affair.
Hello Sezer,
You are not trying to decrypt the files. Please check the path.
C:\Windows\System\system.dll\.thumbnails – I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t look like the right place to be.
Hello Amir,
Quite a few questions and I actually think all of them are answered by the information on the site – but since they are rather detailed and specific, it may require some searching.
1) Password(s)
a. For a personal use, does AxCrypt have more than one passwords? I mean, apart from Sign In password, is there a File / Folder password or passphrase?
No, the whole idea of AxCrypt is to have one, strong password for all your files (and optionally all your passwords if you decide to use the password manager).
2) Encrypted file
a. When I encrypt a file and edit it, does the file really get edited? Because I had an issue where when I encrypted a file, edited it and decrypted it, the file reverted to its original (at the time when it was encrypted). All my edits were lost.
The process, simplified is:
1) The file is decrypted to a temporary location, and then opened from there in the application.
2) You work and save your work to the temporary location.
3) When you are done, in some cases AxCrypt can detect that you closed the app, in other cases you need to click the red broom icon to clean up.
4) When AxCrypt knows you are done, the file (if changed) is re-encrypted to the original location and the temporary copy is wiped.3) Secured folder
a. What is “Secured folder” really? Is it “encrypted folder”? Does “Secured folder” mean the files in the folder are encrypted by automatic?
A secured folder is a folder that AxCrypt monitors and keeps track of files to make it easier to keep all the files in the folder encrypted.
b. When I encrypt a folder, does it become a “Secured folder”? Because in my experience, when I encrypted a folder, the files in it got encrypted, but when I checked in the AxCrypt application, the folder was not listed under “Secured folder”
No, it does not become a secured folder if you encrypt the files in the folder. You need to designate it as secured in AxCrypt.
4) Decrypt a file
a. Why can’t I decrypt a file? I had an issue where a window came up saying that the file was opened in another location when actually it was not because I already closed all applications before trying to decrypt it. In fact I did able to decrypt if but only after I restarted Windows.
There are many reasons why it may be locked, or AxCrypt can’t safely determine that it’s not. For example, if you open a file in notepad, notepad does not lock the file. All AxCrypt knows is that some instance of Notepad may be using it. So AxCrypt will not treat it as done until all instances of Notepad are closed, regardless of what is open in them. Also, the operating system and anti-virus may at times keep files open. If it is a recurring problem, you can check what processes are keeping a file open with either resource monitor or 3rd party utilities like wholockme. You can also contact support.
5) Default secured folders in OneDrive and DropBox
a. Can I move the default secured folders in OneDrive and DropBox to another drive? If can, how to do it.
The default is just that, a default. You can delete it and use some other folder.
b. If I keep ‘un’encrypted files in these default “Secured” folders, do they got encrypted “automatically” (since the name of the folder is “Secured”)? Or what I’m trying to ask is, can somebody open the files in a “Secured” folder in OneDrive and DropBox if I didn’t encrypt those files “manually”?
The encryption of new files is semi-automatic, i.e. requires a click on the red broom clean up icon. This is because automatic encryption of files don’t sit well with many applications such as Microsoft Office.
If you create a file in a synchronized folder, and the synchronizing agent synchronizes to the cloud before you have AxCrypt encrypt it, it can be exposed for a brief time. Safest is to either disable sync when doing that, or encrypting the file locally before moving it to the synchronized folder.
December 9, 2018 at 10:40 in reply to: Can open encrypted files by selecting them from the Windows 7 Recent Items list #12391Hi Kevin,
It is a little hard to prevent it from appearing in the recent files list – it’s a Windows function. I do not know if you can make things conditional or disable it.
However, if you have closed the document correctly and AxCrypt does not show the red clean broom icon, it should be re-encrypted and removed from the temporary location – and thus not be possible to open.
December 9, 2018 at 10:38 in reply to: Axcrypt freezes on initial launch, sometimes for 5 minutes or more #12390Hi Neil,
The version is good.
Do you have any really large folders that are secured?
Do you have an active Internet connection when this happens?
Do you use a Proxy to access the Internet?
Finally, can you please post a screenshot of the AxCrypt window when it is greyed out, and after it actually completes the waiting?
December 7, 2018 at 19:39 in reply to: Axcrypt freezes on initial launch, sometimes for 5 minutes or more #12387Hello Neil,
Can you tell me what version of AxCrypt you’re running?
We are aware of an issue if you have secured folders with *many* files in it. It should not freeze though…
We’d like to get to the bottom of this, but we need to know the circumstances so we can reproduce it – and then fix it.
Hello Alan,
Since AxCrypt does not intrude into the operating system, an encrypted file is decrypted locally when requested and then the appropriate application is used to open the temporarily decrypted file – in the location you mention.
Once you close the app, AxCrypt cleans up and there is nothing to find there.
December 2, 2018 at 18:39 in reply to: How many devices are covered by the Premium (non-business) subscription? #12355Hello Philip,
The subscription is per user, on any number of devices. All you do is sign in with your account (i.e. email) on the devices in question.
Hello Quentin!
AxCrypt is not optimal for e-mail-style communication with many back-and-forth messages. As you say you can send to others who only need the free Viewer. They can update the document and send it back, but they can’t create new documents and share with others.
Hello Nick,
My guess is that the files are marked as hidden or system. AxCrypt will silently ignore such files.
Hello Steve,
Check out the videos at https://forum.axcrypt.net/ !
No, the recipient will not need your password to open the file if you’ve used the key sharing function. That’s the whole point ;-)
It would not be very useful if you were required to divulge your password…
Hello zeus912,
Thank you for the new info, and I’m happy it sort of got resolved. I really have no idea why it would take that long, there’s really no good reason. A few seconds is all it should take – at the most!
I notice you’re on a Mac. Does this happen everytime?
It could get stuck waiting for an Internet connection for example. It shouldn’t, but it could…
Hello zeus912,
Just what version of AxCrypt do you have installed, and what stage does it hang? A screen shot would be helpful.
You can uninstall without risk. It does not affect your existing encrypted files. You do need to re-install a working copy in order to decrypt of course, and you do need to know the password.
Hello Dataplayer,
We’ve looked further at the logs of both software updates and your stored data.
You successfully accessed the account until September 18. Then you started getting “wrong password” errors.
Your data stored on the server, used to validate the account has not changed since April. It has remained the same.
We updated the software on the server on September 8, and then on September 28.
So, between the time you successfully signed in, and when it stopped working for you, nothing on the server has changed! It is hard to envision a situation where our software acting on the same data will give different results with the same input (your password).
I am trying to help you sort this out, but it’s not helpful if we focus on the wrong things.
So, let’s try an experiment.
Remember – all that is really needed to decrypt a file is the AxCrypt app, the original password and the file. The servers are there for convenience and other functions. It is not required.
Presumably you have a file you’d like to decrypt.
1) Make a copy of your encrypted file, and only work on that.
2) Start the AxCrypt app, click ‘Cancel’ when asked for the password.
3) Select File | Options | Clear all settings and restart.I’ve prepared a dummy account for you, we’ll use this to setup AxCrypt again.
4) Sign in with ‘dataplayer@mailinator.com’.
5) Use the password ‘not4real!Files’.
6) When signed in, try to open the encrypted file,
7) You’ll be asked for a ‘file password’. This will be your real, original, password used when you first encrypted that file. Type this in notepad, and copy it and past it to the password file.If this works, go to https://account.axcrypt.net/ and try to sign in with your real account email, and the above pasted password.
Hello bill,
Sorry to hear it! What were you paying for the old version 1 if I may ask ;-) ? You do know that essentially equivalent functionality is still free in version 2? Unfortunately we have bills to pay every year, and with a regular license model we either have to keep finding new paying users at a steadily increasing rate (if we want to grow and improve the software), or engage in the continuous version-switching and upgrade “offers”. AxCrypt 1 stayed at version ‘1’ for 15+ years. Version ‘2’ has stayed at version ‘2’ for 4+ years. With a license model we’d be forced to bump the major version every year or so in order to entice or force you to upgrade… We really do think the subscription model is a more honest way of doing business.
The online account has its’ sides, some plus and some minus. We think benefits far outweighs the disadvantages. You can of course run AxCrypt 2 entirely offline if you insist. Just enable the ‘always offline’ option. You still have to do a ‘registration’, i.e. assign a user name, but the information is never sent anywhere. All is 100% local.
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