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Introducing TGP... "Thor's Godly Privacy"

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TGP - "Thor's Godly Privacy"

06/13/10 v1.1.06

TGP is a small yet very powerful encryption utility. With all eyes on "the cloud," I decided to write an encryption

application better suited to an environment where portability and security were, at the least, challenging. In cloud

computing, not only is the use of file structures becoming more abstract, but the very concept of a "file server" is

becoming more and more ubiquitous.

As such, I designed TGP with "encryption for the cloud" in mind. That means that not only does TGP do everything your

normal PGP-type applications do, but it does things a bit differently - differently in a way that can change the way

you work with your encrypted data. At the simplest level, this is done by encrypting data into byte arrays, and then

converting those byte arrays into Base64 encoded text wrapped inside XML tags. In this way, not only do you get your

typical file-based encrypted representation of your data, but you also get data that you can copy and paste directly

into any email, mailing list, blog-page, or social networking site.

What I think is interesting about this is that if we choose to, we no longer have to be the custodians of our encrypted

data - we don't have to worry about actually housing the files: we can just post them to the internet and let someone

else assume the burden of storing the files for us.

If I want to share encrypted files with someone or secure my own files, all I have to do is TGP encrypt the data I

want, and post it to a mailing list somewhere. In the case of a list like Bugtraq or Full Disclosure, the data is

actually automatically replicated out to any number of archive sites, thus distributing my data for me. I can

literally be anywhere in the world and just do a quick search for my post to retrieve my data. And since the TGP

public key files are also text representations of encrypted key data, I can do the same with my keys.

Normally, you want to keep your private keys as safe as possible. This is still the case with TGP. However, it is

trivial to build as many private keys as you wish to use for anything you want to use them for. TGP Private Key files

are password protected and individually salted, so with a strong passphrase you have very reasonable assurance that no

one is going to get to your key any time soon. So, you can create a private key with a strong password, post that, and

then, say, encrypt a scan of your passport and post that. Then if you are ever in a pinch while travelling or

something like that, you can simply use Google or Bing to access your data wherever you are.

Of course, that's just an example, but I think it illustrates the power of encrypted file structures like this. You

can literally use Facebook to post encrypted documents that you don't have to maintain.

That's really the main different between TGP and an application like PGP. That and of course, TGP is free, and

personally, I think PGP is tardware. It's bloated, it's far too expensive, it's hard to use, and if you don't watch

your licensing, you can get screwed hard like I did when I didn't want to buy the extended support and one day my

encrypted drives stopped working until I paid them. That doesn't fly. TGP also doesn't require that you are an admin

to install. However, the .NET installer for the 4.0 client profile does - that's not my doing. Regardless, here are

the file structures TGP uses:

Things that still suck about TGP

Currently TGP uses a memory stream for the destination of the AES cryptostream. This sucks because it makes the

maximum file one can encrypt based on available memory. It's not a huge deal, but it does keep you from encrypting a

gigabyte file. I'll be changing that soon.

..:.:.:: H O G ::.:.:..

..:.:.:: H O G ::.:.:..

threadul l-am gasit pe fulldisclosure :

Full Disclosure: Introducing TGP...

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