Hacker 10 – Security Hacker

Category: Encryption

Encryption Software

  • Rohos Mini Drive free USB thumbdrive encryption without admin rights

    Rohos Mini Drive free USB thumbdrive encryption without admin rights

    You could use Truecrypt traveller mode to encrypt your data on a USB stick but in order to use Truecrypt on a computer you will need administration rights and this is not possible in public computers like Internet cafe and libraries. Rohos Mini Drive USB encryptrion doesn’t require administrative privileges to open your password protected USB thumbdrive partition on a guest PC.

    Rohos Mini Drive uses on the fly encryption making sure no data is left unencrypted on the guest PC after you have finished viewing it, there is a secure virtual keyboard included to stop key-loggers capturing your password and data is encrypted using AES256 a well known secure algorithm approved by the US Department of Defense to encrypt secret information.

    There is a feature called ‘Hide and Encrypt Folder’ that allows to encrypt profile folders of applications like Skype, Google Chrome and Firefox as well as regular PC folders. This feature locks applications data with a password and ciphers the content strong encryption, when your encrypted USB drive is not plugged in to PC the applications will be unable to start.

     

    Rohos Mini Drive encrypted USB thumbdrive
    Rohos Mini Drive encrypted USB thumbdrive

    This encryption software needs less than 1MB for stand alone installation and creates an encrypted .rdi file where to store your data, it includes Rohos Disk Browser to view and manage your encrypted files, this is very useful as it will help you to avoid using the guest computer Windows explorer and stop you from leaving temporary files behind.

    The free version of Roho Mini Drive has a 2GB encrypted partition size limitation, you will need administration rights to preinstall Rohos Mini Drive on the USB flash drive first and after that this secure encrypted USB thumbdrive can be used anywhere without any admin privileges.

    The company behind Rohos Mini Drive claims that there is no backdoor whatsoever, if you lose your password, that is it, that also means that nobody can force the company to decrypt data held in your USB thumb drive because they have no way of doing it.

    Visit Rohos Mini Drive homepage

  • Review free steganography software SilentEye

    Review free steganography software SilentEye

    Steganography, is the science of concealing information in such a way that the existence of the message will only be known to the sender and the recipient, anyone else looking at the message recipient will not suspect there is something hidden inside or it has a meaning, this kind of covert communication is also known as security through obscurity.

    Covert communications using Steganography can be traced back to 440 BC when Histiaeus shaved the head of  one of his most trusted messengers and and tattooed a message on it, waiting for his hair to grow back before sending him off to deliver the message.

    Computer software implementing steganography, aka stego, often uses encryption as a double safety net so that if the hidden message is ever discovered the opponent will still need a password to decrypt it.

    SilentEye steganography review

    This crossplatform open source free steganography software available for Windows, Mac and Linux offers a very simple and easy to use interface, SilentEye can hide messages or files inside images or sound files, at the moment restricted to .bmp images and .wav sound files but the developers plan to support data hiding inside .jpg and .mp3 files in their next release.

    It is important to understand that the data you hide inside a file must be considerable smaller than the innocuous carrier, there is no perfect science to know the proportion of data that can be hidden inside a carrier, many factors come to play like data compression efficiency.

    I normally hide files that take 10% of the space of the carrier file at most, after extensively using steganography to hide text messages inside images, 10%  is what I have found to be the size closer to the limit allowed, you need not to worry about attempting to hide a file too big inside the carrier as the stego software will warn you of this and you will not be able to carry out the operation until the data you want to hide is reduced or you choose a bigger carrier file.

    SilentEye allows you to use drag and drop to encode and decode data, the encoding window allows you to choose encoding format, output image’s quality, pixel colours used and other settings. You can type your secret message directly into the program prior to hiding it inside the file or have a .txt or any other file ready and merge it directly with the covert file.

    Besides the pretty interface this free steganographic software has a plug-in system to integrate new cryptographic algorithms, sound AES encryption being already available at present time and you can encrypt your data before hiding it.

    SilentEye free Steganography software
    SilentEye free Steganography software

    Conclusion open source stego SilentEye

    You can find more advanced steganographic software but few of them are as easy to use as SilentEye is, the best part of this free stego tool is that it is open source and it allows anyone with coding knowledge to write plugins for it. Source code is also available for download and you can compile SilentEye yourself.

    I do not think that hiding messages in .bmp and .wav files is good enough as these files are normally huge in size and very little used nowadays and it would suspicious for people to exchange songs as a .wav

    Once the developers release their planned plugins to hide data inside .jpg and .mp3 files, SilentEye will be one of the best and easier to use steganographic tools for people who want to get the job done with a point and click mouse, totally suitable for newbies with little computer knowledge.

    Visit SilentEye homepage

  • Free easy to use encryption software R-Crypto

    Free easy to use encryption software R-Crypto

    R-Crypto Data Security and disk encryption software will help you hide all of your internet pornography, financial details and other sensitive data from prying eyes. This free encryption software will create an encrypted virtual disk only visible after you enter the appropiate password, inside that encrypted disk you will be able to store anything you like and after closing it,  the encrypted data will remain unaccessible for anyone without the right password.

    R-Crypto encrypts data using the cryptographic infrastructure of the Microsoft operating system, this can include Microsoft AES crypto provider with key lengths of 128, 192 and 256 bits, for the password it will use the well known uncrackable Secure Hash Algorithm SHA-512. It can also use the Data Encryption Standard DES, or 3DES but it is highly reccomended to stick to AES as DES is not a safe encryption algorithm anymore.

    R-Crypto constitutes a robust and safe encryption program with no backdoors, best of all R-Crypto is completely free of charge. If you want to hide your internet pornography from your wife and others, R-Crypto will be very useful and it is easy to use for beginners.

    With R-Crypto you will have access to your encrypted disk control with an easy to use wizard that will guide you through the creation of the encrypted disk and it will also allow to change the size of the encrypted disk easily and it has many more features like being able to wipe the encrypted hard disk to make sure this is irrecoverable.

    R-Crypto Data Security
    R-Crypto Data Security

    Because R-Crypto uses Microsoft cryptographic infrastructure, it is ideal for companies that require certification for such products to meet certain governmental or corporate standards, as well as individual users with high security and privacy needs.

    Visit R-Crypto homepage

  • List of online services to encrypt email and text messages

    Sending emails it is just like sending postcards, anyone who comes across them can read the content, if you find it too hard to use encryption software like PGP/GnuPG, you can resort to encrypt messages online on a website and send the encrypted text, or post it to Usenet, for the intended recipient to retrieve.

    Online services to encrypt messages

    Lockbin: A free service for sending private email message and files, the service has an integrated online form and you can send the encrypted email from their own website, messages are encrypted in the server using AES256bit and TLS encryption in transit.

    ProtectedText: All encryption is done in your browser with JavaScript, the password is never sent to the server, and just in case you don´t trust the website, the source code used to encrypt is open source. There is no registration, logging or tracking and an easy to remember URL to access the encrypted note is available.

    ProtectedText online text encryption
    ProtectedText online text encryption

    Cypher Dog: This is mostly a paid product, decryption works for free but after two weeks trial you must pay to encrypt messages. It can be used in your desktop computer, smartphone or browser installing an extension, it is a scalable and business friendly solution for encryption.

    Encrypt-Online: An easy to use form allows you encrypt any text message password protecting it, data is encrypted in the browser with JavaScript, you can choose in between the algorithms AES256 bit in CBC mode or 3DES, they are both uncrackable. There is a single advertising banner in the website that finances its operation.

    SecureStuff: This website allows you to encrypt files and text, operation is very easy, there are two windows, enter the text in one of them and you will see the encrypted text in the other window where you can copy and paste it transmitting the decryption password to the recipient by secure means such as a phone call.

    You may also use a compression program like PeaZip, 7Zip or BCArchive to send your encrypted message or file to someone without encryption software installed and with little knowledge of computers, this is very easy to use and free, simply add a password when you compress the .txt file, your recipient will only have to enter a password to read it and it will not overwhelm them if they are not too computer savvy.