[SvanteSpectator]

Ok, we have now published 2.1.1413 which at least addresses some issues similar to yours. No promises though!

[SvanteSpectator]

Right, the fix is as mentioned in 2.1.1410 or higher.

[SvanteSpectator]

We’re not 100% sure, but we did some testing on Key Shares on a network folder, and while we could not reproduce your particular issues, we did run into some other things which we have now addressed.

If all goes well, there will be another build available within an hour or so (2.1.1410 or higher), with that fix. Before continuing with your case, I’d like to see if these changes improve or change the situation for you.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by  Svante.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello,

That’s partially why I added “…at the very least”. The actual strength of the key depends on the number of possible combinations the attacker has to try.

If you ask me “What is the strength of a 32 character password?” My first question back is: what’s a character? Actually it get’s complicated, because it depends on encoding such as US-ASCII, Ansi (in various variations) Unicode (in various variations etc). If we say US-ASCII, that’s 95 possibilities per character. That’s 95^32 number of combinations, equal to 210 bits and change.

However, in your case, the question was “What is the strength of a 32 character hexadecimal string as a password”. Here I now assume that we *know* that it’s a hexadecimal string, and that it’s exactly 32 characters, and that we even know if you’re using upper or lower case A-F. In this case, the strength is exactly 128 bits. If we don’t know if you’re using upper or lowercase, it get’s stronger. If we don’t know if you are using exactly 32 characters, it get’s stronger. How much I leave as an exercise for the reader ;-)

The way AxCrypt works with the password is through a complicated process that adds time to what an attacker has to do in order to try a given password, and also ensures that regardless of if you enter 10 characters or a thousand, we still use them all as best we can and input exactly 128 or 256 bits to the underlying encryption algorithm.

You might want to Google “password based key derivation” for more info. Wikipedia is a good place to start to read about the function AxCrypt uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2 . AxCrypt currently uses PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA-512 with a 1000 iterations. This is not extremely high, since we then use another iterative keywrap for the actual file key.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Peter,

That sounds very strange, and is possibly a bug. Can you describe in more detail the sequence of operations, and even better illustrate with screen shots?

It is correct that if you remove the folder from the list, the files are decrypted – but I do not see how it can without you actually requesting that. Unless of course there’s a serious programming error here.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello James,

I’m not quite sure I follow…

You need to sign in to AxCrypt like this:

After you have signed in, files will open without needing a password and you can encrypt files without specifying a password.

You will remain signed in, until you sign out, your screen saver goes active, your computer goes to sleep, your Windows session is logged or you shut down your computer.

 

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by  Svante.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by  Svante.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello,

Yes, you can use a 32 hexadecimal digits long string as a password.

No, it won’t be interpreted as hex, it’ll be interpreted as a string of characters just like any other password.

However, you misunderstand how this works. Nothing is ignored, and your 32 hexadecimal digits will indeed represent a full 128-bit key, at the very least.

[SvanteSpectator]

Ok, do you recall how you downloaded it? The idea is that the main button detects your bitness, and selects one. Below that you can pick and chose which ever.

Did you use a 32-bit browser?

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Mathieu,

Both are indeed nice suggestions. Thank you. We will implement them, but not in the immediate future – there are other things currently with higher priority, but we’ll get there!

You can follow these issues here:

https://bitbucket.org/axantum/axcrypt-net/issues/151/add-restore-original-name

https://bitbucket.org/axantum/axcrypt-net/issues/150/add-encrypt-rename-as-a-single-operation

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello,

Where and how did you get the source code? I just downloaded a zip of the tip and it just builds. BERSequenceGenerator.cs is here: https://bitbucket.org/axantum/axcrypt-net/src/5d2decd56c53a185c81aa1fbcc99277d8012d415/BouncyCastle.AxCrypt/src/asn1/BERSequenceGenerator.cs .

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Robert,

No, it’s available for both, at least from here. Can you send a screen shot of how it looks or what happens when you try the download?

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Bernie,

You are exactly describing the way AxCrypt is intended to work.

It’s by careful design – if you never had to sign on again, it would not be secure enough. Many on the contrary have concerns about the fact that you don’t have to sign in for every file. As it’s designed, you have to sign in after the screen saver has been activated, the computer has gone to sleepetc.

About “the first time” I think you are referring to the fact that Internet is required the very first time you install and run AxCrypt on a new computer, but not thereafter.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi!

Now 2.1.1409 is available for download!

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Mathieu,

We’re just in the process of building the next version, but for practical reasons we actually publish the release notes a little ahead of time… So, as it looks now, the next version will be 2.1.1407 I hope, and it’ll be available within 30 minutes or so.

Then again, the reason for the minor delay is still not entirely clear, so it may take a little longer.

Happy to see you’re on your toes, and someone actually reads the release notes!

[SvanteSpectator]

Great Matt,

The most simple API for a simple command line version is probably found in the classs ‘AxCryptFile’. See Program.cs for support in parsing a command line, and how to register the necessary dependencies in the dependency injection container with ‘TypeMap.Register’.

If you find you need or would like to make any changes to the core code to facilitate things, let me know or submit a pull request.

Good luck!

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