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How to Decrypt

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markdayton
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How to Decrypt

I am trying to decrypt a number of directories that I encrypted using Toucan 1.2.1.1
I know that I put the wrong password in the first time, but it didn't do anything it just brought up the Progress window and said that it was Starting..., but then it immediately flashed Finished... The file is 102M, so it should of taken at least a little time to decrypt. Subsequent attempts with the correct password results in the same thing. If I change the file name to add the .cpt file extension it does tell me that the decryption failed (Failed to decrypt C:\Vault.cpt). What should happen if the password is wrong? Am I doing something wrong (I'm navigating to the file in the directory pane, selecting the file to decrypt, adding it with the green plus sign, selecting decrypt, entering the password, and pushing the go button)? What's strange is that I got this to work once. I decrypted the file, used what I needed then restarted the computer, should I have re-encrypted the files first? Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated, obviously the files are important to me or I wouldn't have encrypted them. Thanks.

Steve Lamerton
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Sorry

for taking so long to reply, I apologise.

As you were using the Rijndael encryption putting in the wrong password wouldnt have decrypted the file and should have left it in its original state.

Are you decrypting a file or a folder, this seems a little unclear to me? The steps you have taken seem to be fine, but you say you have had to add the .cpt extension to the file, this implies that is wasnt encrypted in the first place which is a little odd, on being encrypted it should add it and then it should be removed on decryption.
I hope we can sort this out.

markdayton
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Steve,

Steve,

Thank you for your reply. I am trying to decrypt a folder that contains sub folders and several files. It has been several weeks after the original encryption, so I don't know if the file extension never got added or maybe I removed it to make it less obvious that it's an encrypted file.

Steve Lamerton
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Right then

here is what I would do. I would go through all of the files checking to see if they are currently encrypted, by opening them and checking the contents. If they are encrypted then copy them to a new folder and make sure they all have the .cpt extension (not the folder though). Then open up a copy of the latest version of Toucan (1.2.2) and add the folder and attempt to decrypt the files. If the correct password is used they should be decrypted, if it isnt then it will skip through the files doing nothing.

markdayton
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response

There is only one file. I encrypted several directories, each containing several files, into the single archive. However, I've been able to recover most of the information from backups, so I'm just going to put this down to user error and try again. Thanks for you help.

Darth Lyccos
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I can´t use my files after decrypting with toucan

I encrypted once all my files using Rijndael but when I tried to decrypt using blowfish I made it but all my files appears with this format *.doc.cpt and I can´t take it off of all my files and carpets...

Can anybody help me with this?????

Steve Lamerton
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You

cannot encrpyt with one system and decrypt with the other, you will need to restore from a backup. The file extension is add in the rijndeal method so you know it is encrypted.

Tim Clark
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Forgive the non-devs possibly

Forgive the non-devs possibly stupid question Blum

Shouldn't this situation be impossible,
If not, couldn't this situation be made impossible.

The idea that trying to decrypt a file using the wrong method would render the encrypted file useless seems very dangerous. This is assuming of course that both the encryption and decryption were both done/attempted using the same interface, i.e., Toucan [obviously if you encrypt using one method in program "A" and decrypt using another method in program "B" it's a more difficult situation].

Could Toucan not be written so as to not allow the decryption using the "wrong" formula ?

If not, perhaps so that the original file is not rendered useless if decrypted improperly?

If not, perhaps a warning message:
"Warning, files must be decrypted using the same formula/method used for encryption ..., etc... failure to do so may result ...etc "

I don't use encryption and have not been following these things closely so if there are reasons already discussed why this can't be done, sorry for the intrusion.

All the best,

Tim

Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?

Steve Lamerton
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Well

for a start I am moving away from the Blowfish method specifically because of these flaws, it is mentionned in large lettering on the Toucan page Wink
And it cant be that common, when the stats are back up I expect Toucan to have moved through the 300,000 download mark and this is the first time I have heard of it happening, still I shall add some more checks into 2.0.1 to try and stop it happening.

m-p-3
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I read the Toucan page and

I read the Toucan page and suggest to use the Rinjdael algorithm right because of this flaw in the Blowfish encryption.

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