Cipher - file encryption/decryption utility

here's your answer!

CIPHER is a simple, yet surprisingly effective file encryption/decryption utility, and now with CipherView, you can encrypt important text files once, and simply view then with CipherView whenever you need to refer back to them, there's no need to decrypt the files and then load them into another viewer.

CIPHER's encryption is reasonably strong, especially if you don't know how the encryption engine works. (and no one but me does). Even if you do know how the engine works, it would still take a good deal of time to be able to successfully decrypt a file encrypted with CIPHER (if you don't know the password to the file).

CIPHER is not intended to replace PGP or other string encryption methods as of yet, it is intended to provide an easy to use, reliable, and simple method for users to protect their files from casual prying eyes.

CIPHER is offered here for free in binary form. If you are using some other platform (OS/2, VMS, Unix, NeXT, amiga, Risc OS, etc...) and you would like a version compiled for your system, contact me and we'll see what we can work out. For obvious reasons, I am not offering the source to this program at this time. If you really think you have a good reason for it, email me and we'll see.

As stated above, the encryption of CIPHER isn't super strong if you know the algorythm, so I do plan on beefing it up for future releases - for now - go ahead, try to figure it out, I'd be very impressed.
(Perhaps I should post a sample encrypted file for people to try to decrypt?)

How to encrypt:

type "CIPHER [infile] [outfile] [key]" at the command prompt, cipher will encrypt or decrypt the input file, writing the output to the outputfile, using the key given. You may also type "CIPHER -h" for help.

Note that there is no difference between encrypting and decrypting. If you CIPHER the same file twice with the same key, you end up with the origional file. Cipher keys ARE case sensitive.

What if I forget my Key?

You are out of luck. If the file is really important, and you can tell me the file type and content, and you can offer me some incentive, I should be able to decrypt it, given enough time.

The program is currently not too speedy because it uses streamed I/O and not Block I/O. This will be remedied in another release soon.

Release history
Mon 05.08.1999	discovered a bug and a semi-bug. The bug is that GEM CipherView will crash on some filesystems immediately after entering a correct password for a ciphertext file. the semi-bug is that I found out the hard way that 80% ASCII is way too high of a criteria to detect the proper password in a text file. I have lowered it to 60%, and will post a new version once the first problem is located and rectified.
Tue 23.02.1999	CipherView 1.0.0 Beta GEM - 68k version only. GEM viewer for CipherText files! Supports drag and drop, va_start, etc. Compatible with Cipher 0.0.5 files. Thanks to Elmar Wisotzki.
Tue 23.02.1999	CipherView 0.5.2 Beta TOS - 68k version only. Views CipherText files from TOS prompt, similar to using TYPE or CAT, but it understands CipherText files. Compatible with Cipher 0.0.5 files.
Tue 23.02.1999	Cipher 0.0.5 Beta TOS - 68k only included for now. Changed key generation, files generated by 0.0.5 are not compatible with 0.0.2 and Vise Versa. 0.0.2 files can be converted to 0.0 .5 format by decrypting them with Cipher 0.0.2 and re-crypting them with Cipher 0.0.5.
Tue 13.10.1998	Cipher 0.0.2 Beta TOS and DOS - 68k, 030, and 030+FPU versions included.
Mon 12.10.1998	0.0.2 Beta DOS release 1 - program is stable but slow.

Binaries
TOS	DOS
CipherView 1.0.0 for GEM
CipherView 0.5.2 for TOS
Cipher 0.0.5
Cipher 0.0.2 Beta	Cipher 0.0.2 Beta

Noah Silva E-Mail:st96kv2s@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu

Copyright © 1998 Noah Silva Created 30.06.1998 at 2:23