Reply To: Offline decryption

[Lucas]

I totally agree. You definitely don’t want a solution which, if taken offline, will result in loss of your data.

I vaguely recall Cloudfogger but I’m not familiar with how it works. That’s why I stick to standards-compliant encryption like AES ZIP encryption which is extremely secure (don’t use legacy ZipCrypto) and will be around for years to come. For individual files that’s not so convenient.

To nuke AxCrypt try uninstalling it from the Control Panel. Then search for and delete ALL of its registry keys. After doing that turn on hidden files in Windows Explorer and go through both Program Files folders. Then check ProgramData. Then check UserData (can’t remember the exact name). Maybe even search your hard drive for any occurrences of AxCrypt.

That should destroy any remnants.

Once you’ve done all of it, reinstall AxCrypt and load it via the Start Menu. If it prompts for your email address then you can be pretty sure it’s been nuked. Then try and load the file and see what happens. It shouldn’t load.

Then import you key pair and AxCrypt ID. I’m guesssing the latter contains your email address hence why you won’t be prompted to enter it! 

The reason I say open the encrypted file first is because, if your AxCrypt remnants have indeed been nuked, it’ll refuse to open and will need to download the keypair etc. from the server. That’s why it’d need your email address and password. In the scenario of AxCrypt being closed then you wouldn’t have access to the server, obviously.

If it won’t load the encrypted file, then load your keypair and ID. It probably will only prompt you for your password, assuming your email address is embedded in either the ID or the file. Either way this simulates AxCrypt being shut down because as long as you can access your encrypted files then you’ve got nothing to worry about.

It’ll be interesting to see if that does the trick.

I trust this helps.