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What is meant by strength of encryption?
Strength is a relative term. An encrypted file that is resistant to a wide variety of "attacks" is stronger than an encrypted file that is vulnerable to "attacks." Remember that encryption keeps files private. The degree to which an encryption program can keep files private is a measure of the strength of the encryption. The objective is to keep unauthorized people from reconstructing the original file. The stronger the encryption, the more difficult it becomes for a person to ever have a chance of looking at the data that is being protected or made private. In simple terms, all encryption does is make a file private. The degree of privacy relates to the strength of encryption.Some encryption programs simply "flip bits". Other programs "flip bits" and then tuck the user's actual password into the file that was "encrypted". The author of CRYP feels that both of those methods are inadequate if a high degree of privacy is desired. Without discussing the actual algorithm that the CRYP program uses to keep files private, it is a method far superior than the two methods discussed above. CRYP does not merely "flip bits" nor is the user's password ever stored in the output file. In fact, the user's password is not stored on the disk at all. That feature of CRYP makes the encryption stronger than other encryption programs. It also makes the user's password the only thing that will "unlock" the file. Even the author of CRYP cannot decrypt a CRYP-encrypted file if the user forgets his or her password.The output of CRYP, as is the case with all encryption programs, must not be altered in any way or successful decryption will not be possible. This concept is analogous to an executable file. Just as you could not randomly change an executable file and expect it to run, the same holds true with the output of CRYP. The CRYP file is a non-executable binary file (not a text file). You can safely do a hex dump of a CRYP file but you must treat the CRYP file with as much respect as you would an executable file. |