Forums Community AxCrypt 2 makes me sad… Reply To: AxCrypt 2 makes me sad…

#6564 Reply

Brian

Ben Langton

I would like to apologize for the tone of my initial post […] I highly recommend having some sort of document, posted prominently on your website, to help transition users of AxCrypt 1 to AxCrypt 2

I don’t think it was your initial post that he was referring to. Anyhow it doesn’t matter now :-).

A colourful infographic would be a neat idea as a visual representation is often clearest.

RaymondLC92

Ah I hadn’t thought of cloud transfers, that’s not something I engage in often and when I do I usually need compression. In such cases I usually use an encrypted archive (i.e. 7zip).

7-Zip has some problems with its encryption, discussed elsewhere on this forum. It’s not a bad piece of software but there are better alternatives. It’s not insecure under most situations but there are outstanding issues with it (discussed in-depth on their forums).

Use 7-Zip for your compression and then use GPG (or AxCrypt) for the resulting archive.

I can see AxCrypt being very useful for encryption of files uploaded to DropBox, OneDrive, etc.

I automatically synchronise my cloud folders but only content with an .AXX extension will be uploaded. By doing this no unencrypted data ever touches the cloud, and, because I’m working with multiple files AxCrypt 2 saves time on entering the password, decrypting and then re-encrypting compared with the laborious (and more human error prone) AxCrypt 1.

Bitlocker (or other FDE) is like locking down a building at night but AxCrypt was like locking my office door behind me and only unlocking it when I needed it open.

That’s not a good analogy because you’re describing how AxCrypt 2 works.

  • You shutdown (that clears your AxCrypt 2 encryption key)
  • Your computer switches off (that clears your BitLocker key)

When you restart your computer or sign out of AxCrypt or lock your desktop environment or put your computer to sleep  or hibernate your computer or your screensaver starts then AxCrypt 2 clears your encryption key.

Actually AxCrypt 2 works in virtually the same way as AxCrypt 1 except it’s more convenient. The only argument you can make against AxCrypt 2 is if your computer is hacked whilst you’re logged into AxCrypt 2 an attacker could steal your password but that same argument applies to AxCrypt 1 (where a criminal would capture all your passwords over time and/or data).