[SvanteSpectator]

Thanks, yes! Working on it. It seems spammers are getting around the Google reCaptcha v2. Sigh.

[SvanteSpectator]

Thanks, I’ll remind the web folks!

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello RockNRoll,

Thanks for the suggestion. We’ve added it as a suggest enhancement here https://bitbucket.org/axantum/axcrypt-net/issues/310/add-anonymous-rename-to-options-for .

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi Stephen,

You are indeed right. We will be doing something like that, along with an option to change the behavior since so many users request it. Thanks!

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello moznf,

That’s not what the screen shot is saying.

If you can’t open the file with AxCrypt because it says the password is wrong, well, it is.

A likely scenario is:

1) You upgrade to AxCrypt 2.
2) You sign up, set your password and sign in (thus typing your password at least three times) (on May 25).
3) You open the file in question, and get a new prompt for a “file password”.
4) You enter the right original AxCrypt 1-password.
5) The file opens, and is automatically converted to AxCrypt 2, and using the new AxCrypt 2-password.
6) Time passes. 3 Days to be more precise.
7) You start AxCrypt and realize you have forgotten the password you set in step 2. (On May 28).
8) You issue a password reset. (this will allow you to sign in again, not to open files encrypted with the old password).
9) You sign in to AxCrypt 2 again, but can’t open the file.
10) You uninstall AxCrypt 2, and re-install your old AxCrypt 1 version.
11) You get the message in the screen shot.

You need to remember the password you set on May 25.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello moznf,

That is quite natural – and clearly documented in many places.

AxCrypt 2 can open AxCrypt 1-files.

AxCrypt 1 cannot open AxCrypt 2-files.

AxCrypt 2 will auto-upgrade AxCrypt 1-files to AxCrypt 2 format when you open them.

If you wish to revert to version 1.7 (then at least get the most updated version from http://www.axantum.com/ !), download the standalone / portable version of AxCrypt 2 from https://forum.axcrypt.net/, and decrypt the updated files and then re-encrypt them with version 1.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi,

AxCrypt does zip-style compression before encryption…

AxCrypt 1 & 2 are designed for the same basic use-case, it’s just that AxCrypt 2 has evolved based on input and feedback for more ease of use, and wider usability (sharing). They work the same, the only difference is that the AxCrypt 1 checkboxes “Remember this for encryption” and “Remember this for decryption” are “always checked” (they don’t exist, but in principle) in AxCrypt 2, and instead we use the screen saver or similar to clear the password memory. You should *always* lock your computer when you walk away from it. If you don’t it doesn’t matter what I do with AxCrypt, you should consider your system and security as compromised.

[SvanteSpectator]

Thanks Ben!

Yes, a really nice guide to how to upgrade, why to upgrade – and why not would probably be useful. We’ll see what we can manage.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi all again!

Interesting discussion, I’m enjoying it mostly, but do try to direct comments to the subject matter and not to the persons. We want these forums to be a nice place, and I certainly want there to be criticism – but on the technology, not the participants.

Although many users use AxCrypt for local device file encryption, as has been mentioned, there are many potential problems with that. AxCrypt was developed and intended for the scenario when files actually leave your physical device. For local device encryption, I primarily recommend full drive or volume encryption, such as BitLocker, VeraCrypt etc. It’s still useful for local file encryption in many scenarios, but it’s not the primary target use case.

AxCrypt 1 and 2 *has* been audited, several times, by entities competent in the field. Unfortunately, none of these reports are public, so you’ll just have to trust me on that ;-) Even better: Trust, but verify. I’d be more than happy if someone will find funding and organize a similar public audit as was done for TrueCrypt / VeraCrypt. For obvious reasons, even if I had the funds, I cannot do that myself.

The more effort that is spent in analyzing AxCrypt, the better it becomes. I am not at all afraid that some weakness might be found, since if they are there – we *really* want to know about it so we can *fix* it. In fact Stephen did find a problem, not in the actual algorithms or implementation of the cryptography, but in the dynamic calculation of the number of rounds to run the key wrap used to secure the session key (each file is encrypted using a unique key, your password or public key is used to encrypt that session key), causing it to hit the minimum (but still decent) 5000 rounds more often than it should. This is already fixed, and will be released later this week.

The sooner we become aware of a flaw, the sooner we can fix it. If it had been an issue on the level of the apparent level of the BCArchive implementation bug seemingly exploited by Stephen, we would have released a fix within 24 hours if at all possible – and we have a mechanism already builtin where we can alert all users with online access very strongly about the need to update. Actually we have a “reliability” warning we can trigger, and a separate “security” warning too.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello all!

Just a quick note from me, Svante, the developer of both AxCrypt 1 and 2.

To be honest – I’ve only read through the longer posts superficially, but I think I get the general drift. First some undisputable facts:

– AxCrypt 1 was made by me, myself and I with my own private fully own one-man company Axantum Software AB. (AB is a swedish form of incorporation, somewhere between LLC and Inc.),

– AxCrypt 2 is made by me and small team of developers, designers, etc from the company AxCrypt AB in which I am co-owner and co-founder which has the rights to use the AxCrypt brand, sites etc, granted by Axantum Software AB.

AxCrypt 1 is a Windows-only simple password based AES-128 file encryption software written in C++, which has on the plus-side been very stable for almost 15 years, and on the minus side not really been developed at all for 15 years. The cool thing is that it’s still useful! AxCrypt 1 is entirely free and only released under the GPL license.

AxCrypt 2 is multi-platform hybrid client and SAAS infrastructure which includes a key server for public key based secure sharing of encrypted files, a online password manager, and support for AES-256 and RSA-4096 for the PKI parts. It is written in C# and currently is released on Windows, Android, iOS. Soon Mac OS X. We may even go Linux it’s not a big step. AxCrypt is GPL open source and free for some functionality on the Windows platforms. Advanced features, keyserver, stronger encryption, other platforms require a paid subscription plan.

Just clearing those things up first.

Then, apart from some issues with the tone of voice in the discussion, I essentially agree. Yes, both are right.

What I want AxCrypt to be, and I think it is until proven otherwise, is properly implemented strong encryption with clearly defined security and as simple a model as possible to analyze. There are always attack vectors, and we try to be very open with what they are. We want this strong encryption utility to be packaged in such a simple and easy to use package, that just about anyone can install it and use it.

I will not agree that I think AxCrypt users are stupid, ignorant or whatever was mentioned above. However, I have 15 years of experience dealing with support issues from a total of perhaps 10 million users. A very, very small percentage of these users have any issues at all. But from the ones that do, I have seen patterns of common mistakes sometime causing dataloss due to mistyped or forgotten passwords. Most of the things that AxCrypt 2 is criticized for above are functions defined as a result of specific, concrete and actual situations with actual users.

So, yes, AxCrypt is made to be encryption for the masses. The 99%. Not the 1%. I think the biggest reason why encryption is not more widely used is because 99% of the software, caters to the 1% of the users. I’m trying to change that.

But, please! I like criticism, in fact, that’s the other big inspiration for developing how AxCrypt works. So keep it coming!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by  Svante.

[SvanteSpectator]

The fastest supercomputers are capable of cracking at around 3 trillion passwords per seconds

I’m guessing that based on password hashing, hashing algorithms are significantly faster than AES which is the basis for the iteration here. Nevertheless, given a computer which does 3 trillion AES keywrap iterations / second, the average time to crack one AxCrypt-encrypted file password as mentioned above with it’s own strength of about 75 bits, with the 5000 round minimum in effect, is about 50 000 years.
If you use an even stronger password, then of course you get more margin. After all – we’re actually effectively only using 75 out of the 256 bits available in the algorithm key with passwords of that style. (A little more to be exact, since there’s also the 1000 iterations in the PBKDF2 function). You should probably add a factor for that above, giving 50 million years. But it’s always good to be conservative!

As you say – attacks are only getting better, that’s why we use the current hardware to scale up the strength as hardware gets better, so we at least keep pace with that.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi Stephen,

Yes, the fix is in and will be released next week. Thanks! If you’d like I’ll be happy to give you 3 months Premium as a small bug bounty token of appreciation.

You should interpret the 50ms / full keywrap as being equivalent to targeting a cracking speed of 20 passwords / seconds in the target system, using our code – which is not speed optimized in the sense for example hashcat is which can use GPUs for much higher throughput.

The target of 20 full keywraps / second is set so that in normal use and even on a much slower system (think mobile), it will still be fast to actually use for a user. We don’t want a multi-second delay to open a file for regular users.

So it’s a compromise between usability and strength. But, at a target of 20 / second, and lets say you can with GPUs, some work and a decent amount of money can reach 500x that speed, you’re at 1000 / second. That’s still pretty slow. If you use a password such as that recommended by us via our password generator ( the most complex ones we suggest are at approximately 75 bits ).  At 1000 / second, a crack will average a little under a trillion years. With a national security level budget you could perhaps increase that by a factor a million, in which case a single crack will average a little under a million years. For the type of use AxCrypt is made for (private and commercial information security), we believe it’s reasonable.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hi Tim,

Nope. Or, rather, it depends on the situation. But here he’s using “Password2” to sign to AxCrypt, while the files are actually encrypted with “Password1”. Resetting will seem to have the same effect in this particular case, while slightly different things are happening beneath the hood.

It’s not clear how Robert “entered Password2 as his password”, but it might be that there was an upgrade to AxCrypt 2 at the same time.

In any case, one should always use the *change* password when the current password is known.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Stephen,

Thanks for contacting us.

First of all, the web site documentation was wrong. The minimum is 5000, and typical values are between 25000 and 100000. The reason is the editor inherited this text from the old site, it’s essentially a copy-paste issue. It is now updated.

The minimum of 6 is lower down in the code, in the actual specifications of the key wrap. The higher levels enforce a minimum of 5000.

Now, more importantly, reviewing the code we note that the speed determination is slightly incorrect. The intention is to do batches of 1000 iterations until half a second has gone, and then use that to calculate the effective speed. The current code includes the key derivation in each such 1000 iterations – which in itself also includes a 1000 iterations of a hashing function. The net effect is that our calculation is off. But it’s still at least 5000.

The part of 1 second / 2 second delays you’ll have to explain, because I don’t follow the reasoning. The idea is that performing the total number of key wrap iterations, should take approximately 50ms.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Robert,

You should ask him to *change* his password to Password1. There is a menu option for that in the program.

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