Archive for the ‘Cryptography’ Category

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a powerful yet free Open-Source disk encryption Software. I am quite satisfied with the software that I decided to introduce it here in my blog, may all future releases remain free to use!

With TrueCrypt you can maintain an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On their website they explain ‘On-the-fly encryption’ as an automatic continuing encryption process to data right before it is saved and decrypted right after it is loaded. In simple words, you will end up having an encrypted volume to secure all your sensitive data inside. This volume can be mounted and accesses like any regular folder in your system each time you provide the right password and then dismounted to prevent access.

What I personally think makes this software special is the ease of using encrypted files right from the secured volume to the computer’s RAM. As such, if you have a video file, you will not wait until it is fully decrypted to play it, instead the stream will be decrypted right into the RAM while playing, the performance and speed is quite similar to playing any regular video file you have on your system. Brilliant, isn’t it?
Read the rest of this entry »

In cryptography, Caesar cipher is one of the simplest encryption techniques. It is a substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter after a fixed number of positions down the alphabet. However, this applet shifts each character (letter, number of symbol) after a number of positions down the ASCII table. Caesar’s cipher is categorised as a symmetric encryption and the secret key in this case is the number of shifts!

• To encrypt, select the encode mode, number of shifts and click Run.

• You may encode a message multiple times.

• To Decrypt, select the Read the rest of this entry »

I have also posted this to HackThisSite.org articles

Introduction

Are you looking for a safe way to encrypt your files and messages? What if there is a method that can do all that and more and yet it is FREE to use? If you are interested, keep reading to know about encrypting and exchanging files safely with GPG and PGP.

Read the rest of this entry »

MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) can be used effectively to verify files integrity and authenticity by computing and checking MD5 hashes.

In Windows: MD5summer can be used to perform the task.

While in Linux: The famous md5sum utility is usually used.

Read the rest of this entry »

This article introduces steganography and explains some of its techniques and methods supported by examples. My objective was to make this post as short as possible while covering all important information. Your comments are welcome for any possible enhancements or for future articles about steganography by me or other people.
I have also posted this to HackThisSite.org articles.

Steganography

Steganography is all the techniques used to exchange secret messages without drawing attention. It is the science of hiding information. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you seen a code similar to this before?

An interesting example from real life is the stone of James Leeson, who died in 1792. For a long time, the box-and-dot code at the top of the stone (Figure 1) remained a mystery for the public, but the secret was revealed as Meyer Berger explained in his NY Times column in the 1950s, it was finally decrypted. It says: “Remember death”. It was a Masonic cipher.

Figure 1: Stone of James Leeson 1

Read the rest of this entry »