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Hello Bernard,
Sorry, but I do not understand what you mean when you differentiate between “password” and “crypt/decrypt key”. There’s always just the password – which is used to encrypt/decrypt.
So, when you say “_I do know the crypt key i used but not the password_” I don’t now quite what you mean.
If you have forgotten the password used to encrypt the original file, then you can’t decrypt. Please read the FAQ at https://forum.axcrypt.net/ .
Hello Bernard,
You can decrypt your AxCrypt 1-encrypted files with AxCrypt 2. Just sign in to AxCrypt 2, and select “decrypt”. If your AxCrypt 2 password is not the same one used to encrypt the file, you will be prompted for the original password.
Hello Chris,
Version 1.7 is deprecated. It is unmaintained. It is unsupported. You are free to use it, but discouraged to do so for the named reasons. It does not support 256-bit encryption.
As for the the multiple password requirement – you should not be using that either, especially if you are keen on real security which seems to be the case.
Please read my blog post about this, here: https://forum.axcrypt.net/blog/use-of-different-passwords/ . The gist of the article is that using different passwords for private files “at best it adds no security and at worst it causes a situation with *less* security“.
Hello Derek,
Great! I was probably going to suggest the nirsoft software as the next step – it’s very useful to understand why shell extensions are not working as expected. I have no idea either why they would be disabled, especially after a re-install.
Hello Derek,
If it used to work, and now doesn’t, something must have changed. You may want to try to uninstall, and re-install the distribution.
If that doesn’t work, some other shell extension may be the problem.
Hello Neeraj Goel,
You will have to remember the password – if that’s what AxCrypt says is the problem. Please remember that passwords are case and space-sensitive! I.e. “password” is different from “Password” and “a secret” is different from “asecret”.
Hello Will,
Just right click the file(s) and select AxCrypt | Decrypt, and they will be decrypted to their original form. You do not need Premium to do this.
Hello Monkey,
Thanks for the information. We’ll have to investigate and see if we can reproduce this. It is known that AxCrypt needs to be improved for large amounts of files and folders.
I’ve added your findings to the following issue: https://bitbucket.org/axantum/axcrypt-net/issues/315/performance-problems-with-10000-files-in .
Hello RS,
Thank you for your feedback!
I’d still like to reply with some facts.
A big problem with the old AxCrypt 1 was that the *encryption* password was not in any way verified. This opened for scenarios with many different encryption passwords, as well as typos. The current AxCrypt 2 design where we keep to one encryption password that has to be verified (in a cryptographically secure manner) has drastically reduced the number of incidents with users not being able to access encrypted data due to forgotten passwords or typos. That’s a fact.
If you use AxCrypt 2 from Windows Explorer, like AxCrypt 1, the normal workflow is identical. The looks of the dialogs are different, but this the same number of clicks and keyboard hits as when using the ‘remember this for encryption’ and ‘remember this for decryption’ in AxCrypt 1. That’s a fact.
You write that the use of the cached password feature is a security risk because “if anyone manages to get access to the computer and the user is signed into Axcrypt the person has access to encrypted files!“. That’s simply not true, unless of course you left the computer entirely logged on to Windows with AxCrypt open. If you do, you’re pretty much out of luck security-wise anyway. If you sign out, if the screen saver goes active, if the computer goes to sleep, AxCrypt will sign out. There’s also an option to set a timeout for AxCrypt, just like a screen saver.
And no, we don’t want to force people to log on to the AxCrypt site to track them. We don’t track logged on users. However, we do want to try to make AxCrypt survive and evolve. This requires money. Not even one in a ten-thousand donated even $10 for AxCrypt 1. I had two options – kill AxCrypt entirely, or try to find a compromise by still offering AxCrypt for free with basic features, and then add features to make it worth paying for. For payments to work, we do need some kind of account mechanism. However, the main function of the online account is to host the password manager, and the key pairs used for key sharing (sharing encrypted files without sharing passwords), and to serve as a way to validate the encryption passwords used (see above).
You are welcome to use AxCrypt 1 of course – but beware, there’s no support and no maintenance. It’s obsolete, sunsetted abandonware at this point. Use at your own risk.
Hello Mike,
Ok, yes, in that scenario it’s not a perfect match. The “obvious” way to handle it is to encrypt the files on the desktop, and then backup them in the normal way. If the videos are large, it may not be that convenient though. Problem here is of course that you’re not actually backing up the files, but a processed version. We don’t really support this scenario that well.
Another way to handle it, which might actually be beneficial, is to let AxCrypt handle the collisions, and thus save successive generations of the files. IIRC AxCrypt will handle collissions by generating successive unique file names for the encrypted files, so MyFile.txt will get encrypted as MyFile-txt.1.axx if there already is a MyFile-txt.axx, leaving both . Do try this out, I am not exactly sure from memory just how this is handled in the different scenarios.
Hello Monkey,
Yes, for subfolders to be included you should enable the ‘include subfolders’ option. The reason there’s a warning is simply because it’s easy to make mistakes and with this option enabled, the consequences are potentially so much greater.
Subfolders themselves may not be deleted if they contain for example hidden or system files which are excluded from deletion buy AxCrypt. Once again to protect from dangerous mistakes.
The secure delete function opens the file for write, and then writes a random sequence of bytes over the entire file, flushes everything to disk and the deletes the file.
Hello mimmo,
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.
Hello Mike,
I sometimes respond weekends, but no guarantees ;-) I am happy it is appreciated.
I’m not certain of the situation you describe “I have a backup of some files on that external hard drive; backup occurs once a month. In the above scenario, that backup would be encrypted. Therefore, I’ll have to decrypt, do the backup, then encrypt again; am I right?”
If the files are encrypted on the external hard drive with AxCrypt (or similar file encryption software), then they stay encrypted regardless of how you copy or move the files. So, no, in that situation you backup the files like any other files. They are encrypted on the external disc, and are identically encrypted on the backup copy. If, however, you encrypt them with EFS or similar ‘transparent’ encryption, they will normally be decrypted transparently on read, and thus be written to the backup unencrypted, unless that destination again is configured for encryption.
With AxCrypt currently encrypting 300GB should take about as long as copying the data twice, more or less. It depends on the size of the files, the speed of the storage media and the speed of the processor.
Hello Biz,
You say “latest” – just what version is that?
From your description, it sounds like you’re not actually encrypting with AxCrypt (portable or not). You are aware that the portable AxCrypt 2.x does require you to use the AxCrypt main window? There is no explorer integration. If you do try to encrypt from the windows explorer context menu, you’re probably accessing and using the built-in Windows EFS encryption (which is very non-portable, since the encryption essentially is tied to the user/windows pc it was run on).
Hello Mike,
No, AxCrypt is File Encryption software. It encrypts files (using a password). It is not access control. You can acheive a low level of protection by using windows NTFS file system protection – but it is trivial to by pass by anyone with administrator rights on any Windows computer. In fact, there’s really no “middle ground” between encryption and no protection, or at least very little.
You can also use EFS, which is built in to Windows – but it’s a time consuming process there too to encrypt the existing data, and EFS is a little tricky to use on external drives, you need to export a certifcate and keep it very safe.
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