macintosh encryption, puzzlepalace in question.

[basicnfo]

I waznt sure if should place this in the mac forum or not, but since this is about encryption more than about the mac i thought i would put it in here. I have this prog, its called puzzlepalace (http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill), and it will encrypt/decrypt single files and emails, it is for os x, using blowfish, triple des, idea, cast, rc5, algoritims. My question(s) is , is this better than pgp, has there been any bugs in it, or backdoors, how can i find out if so, and is anyone using it in place of pgp?

[basicnfo]

i also wanted to know if pgp would encrypt folders as well, since puzzlepalace only encrypts single files, of if any other prog will encrypt folders with files in them?

[IchNiSan]

Well, I have never used puzzlepalace, but, the guy that puts it out seems to be fairly reputable, and seems to write good software.

If you wan file and email encryption though, I would download and install Gnu Privacy Guard, GPGmail, and GPGTools. You can find all this for OS X at the following sites..

Gnu Privacy Guard
http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/

GPGTools
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/14222

GPGmail
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=10049&db=mac

This stuff should be all you will need for as much encryption as you want.

Besides, its all free, no need to send in the 15 dollar donation.

Oh, and PGP will encrypt folders. What it does is create a file which is a mountable volume, and then you mount that volume and copy files/folders into and out of it. The open source Gnu Privacy Guard will NOT do this, only PGP. Unfortunately, the latest version of PGP (8.0) is still in beta, and as far as I could tell when I tried it last week it would only do up to 256 bit encryption.

IchNiSan

[basicnfo]

Thank you for those links, i will go over them and see if they will work for me. I did glance at the first one and it waz talking 10.2, and i havent made that move yet (need the $$$!) I did find out that puzzlepalace does leave copies in the /tmp folder but i cant find the link where i read it.