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File Vault Help This software is free to use. In a recent article in Defense News (Vol 12 No 31) Aug 4-10, 1997 William Crowell, National Security Agency deputy director said "If a product of 64-bit strength were used by a military org... it would take 6,000 to 7,000 years to recover just one message." 1. File Vault - 64-bit (8 bytes) block encryption algorithm variable length key up to 448 bits File Vault - Places a number of user selected files in a single self extracting / self decrypting executable file called a File Vault. A File Vault can be sent easily to anyone over the internet and only accessed with your password. The recipient of a File Vault does not have to have any special software installed to decrypt or access a file vault. Each File Vault is totally self contained. This makes for easy attaching, receiving and general use. File Vault allows you to open the vault, access the files, then close the vault which performs a secure wipe of the files from the disk surface. In an encrypted file vault, filename information is encrypted too, so if someone examines the vault with a disk editor, no information on contents is available other than the optional description line entered during creation. Great for "Your Eyes Only" files... The encryption algorithm is the highly regarded BLOWFISH by Bruce Schneier, world renowned Cryptographer. See VGP information below for more detail. File Vault is available at... www.alcuf.ca/fv - - - - A word on compression: When you use Winzip or other compression utilities from Windows, they often will create temporary files that can reside on the users system which are complete duplicate files, or parts of files that you would rather be fully secured. Therefore, rather than zipping files and containing them in a vault, build a vault first which securly containes your files, and then create the zip (or other archive) file. That way any temporary stuff created by the archiver will be encrypted and remain secure. - - - - 2. Other free utilities included with File Vault --------------------------------------------- The following utilities are stand alone utilities that reside on your File Vault directory. These can be moved or deleted as you wish. DISKWIPE.EXE (and diskinfo.dll) - this utility is used to securly remove deleted information from a hard drive to prevent undeleting. Let's say you have a bunch of stuff you just deleted, and need to make sure nothing that was on the system can be undeleted and accessed again. This utility creates a file the size of the free remaining space on your drive and fills it with space, then deletes it.