[guispeak] Announcing Stash utilities
- From: Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: guispeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 09:23:05 -0400 (EDT)
Although not about GUI software, I thought folks here may still be
interested in this announcement since the utilities are screen reader
friendly.
Jamal
Now available at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/stash.zip
Stash
Version 1.1
October 9, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Jamal Mazrui
LGPL license
Stash is a set of free, console-mode utilities for encrypting and
decrypting text via an API that is built into Windows. Requiring the .NET
Framework 2.0 (or above), the three utilities are Stasher.exe, Stash.exe,
and Unstash.exe. They have the following command-line syntax.
Stasher Text
where Text is a sequence of characters to encrypt, e.g., a password. If
it contains one or more space characters, then surrounding quotes should
be used. The result is a file called Stasher (no extension) in the
current directory. This file encrypts the text in such a way that it is
considered secure from being read by any log-on user besides the one who
created it.
If Stasher.exe is run without a command-line parameter, it looks for a
file called Stasher in the current directory, decrypts it, and sends the
text to standard output. This output would be visible in a console
window. Alternatively, another program may run the utility and capture
its standard output.
The other utilities provide more flexibility and work as a pair.
Stash SourceFile TargetFile
or
Unstash SourceFile TargetFile
Stash.exe encryptes text contained in SourceFile, creating TargetFile as
the result. Unstash.exe does the reverse, decrypting SourceFile and
putting its text in TargetFile. If either file name contains a space,
surrounding quotes should be used.
The Stash utilities are
open source, with code in the language of Visual Basic 2005. Under the
license, derivative works must likewise be open source. If only the
binary executables are being used, however, redistributing the source code
is not necessary. These files may be named and located so as to make
their purpose as obscure as possible.
Note that information saved by Stash may be read by someone else who has
access to the same computer user account and knowledge of the technique.
Stash offers high protection only when the file is viewed from another
computer or a different user account on the same computer. Thus,
sensitive information may be kept from others who log on to the computer,
or from malware attempts to copy and use the information elsewhere. Less
significant protection is provided by the concealing of plain text or
other recognized file formats. More technical details are available at
the following web pages.
Data protection API - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DPAPI
How to: Use Data Protection
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229741(VS.80).aspx
ProtectedData Class (System.Security.Cryptography)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.protecteddata.aspx
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