Wincrypt Taps AES to Safeguard Files | eWeek

Wincrypt Taps AES to Safeguard Files

Written By
Jim Rapoza
Jim Rapoza
Oct 28, 2002
1 minute read
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Centric 2000 Solutions Groups Wincrypt 2.0 is a simple, easy-to-use Windows-based encryption tool that takes advantage of AES to provide extremely strong protection for vital documents and files.

To encrypt files using Wincrypt, I could take advantage of an integrated right-mouse-button menu or use the main Wincrypt interface. In tests, files were encrypted and decrypted fairly quickly.

However, when encrypting a file, I was asked to provide a password of at least five characters. Although this is convenient, a five-character password is not generally considered adequate security.

Wincrypts interesting anti-logging decryption feature allowed me to use a screen-based keyboard to enter my password, instead of using a standard keyboard. The main purpose of this feature is to defeat keyboard-based logging sniffers, which record user keystrokes.

Although Wincrypt uses AES, files I encrypted could not be opened in other AES tools—recipients needed their own copy of Wincrypt, or files had to be encrypted using the self-decrypting option, which adds to file size.

The full version of Wincrypt is priced at about $47 and can be downloaded from www.wincrypt.com.

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