Crypto paranoia   1 comment

Posted at 8:37 am in Security

I’m a sucker for good crypto apps.

Back in the 80’s I used to hide files in C64 using a BASIC script based on substitution cipher.

Then came MS-DOS and PCTools7.

Made lots of batch files using the crypto features of zip and arj.

In the mid-90’s came Zimmerman’s PGP (I still keep my old keys).

I did a few encrypted journals using PGP’s crypto libraries in C.

In Unix I still used PGP and it’s newly incarnated GnuPG (I didn’t trust GPG yet in it’s 0.* versions).

I made my own ARC4 code based on CipherSaber advice.

Played with Perl’s Blowfish/Twofish modules incorporating that into… yes, more private journals.

Installed OpenBSD along with Gentoo.

Then discovered the easeness of A. M. Kuchling’s PyCrypto Toolkit.

Currently my needs have changed, but my love (addiction?!) to crypto is still much alive.

Before Schneier’s PasswordSafe I used to have a list of different passwords for different sites/files that I encrypt with GnuPG.

Now I use KeePass Password Safe for Windows and Keepassx for Gentoo to guard my passwords. They’re all random so I can’t be bothered to remember them all. But I still keep a backup encrypted in GnuPG with a symmetrical key.

I use encrypted filesystems to house my semi-private files. Truecrypt works well for both Windows and Linux. But in Linux I use another system which is EncFS.

I still play with simple crypto systems in my scripts namely substitution ciphers just to scratch an itch every now and then.

And what made me obsessed with crypto? Most probably it’s because of the Cold War period I was born into, and this book that my father kept lying around the house. Plus Wargames and Bladerunner. And a lot of other puzzling things :)

Written by admin on February 22nd, 2007

One Response to 'Crypto paranoia'

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  1. I was just surfing by when searching about cryptography on the c=64 and hit your page. I was wondering if anybody in the world would show interest for a small tool I was doing recently for fun.

    Just take a look at cypherbasic 64, a crypto-extended basic with some functions for substitution, transpostition and so on.

    I probed in some forum if there is any interest.

    http://www.forum64.de/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=19316
    http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24880

    But I think, that’s way too freaky. I just drop it off, maybe you find it funny. Maybe not, what would not be too surprising for me. Think I better go and work on some real stuff… haha. Cant help that I like this things; programs for computers that nobody cares. Basic extentions and stuff.

    You’ll find the download file in the german forum that is linked first, the english one will be better for understanding if you dont talk too much german.

    Hanno Behrens

    24 Oct 07 at 8:49 pm

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