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Fast Fact About Stealth Encryption

Hackers will grow old and die before cracking the key, even with a supercomputer. Because Stealth Encryption uses Blowfish (an algorithm), there are more possible keys to check than there are atoms in the Milky Way!

• Approximate number of atoms in our galaxy = 2²²³
• Number of possible keys in Stealth Encryption = 2⁴⁴⁸ (a 10 followed by 92 zeroes!)

How can Stealth Encryption software be used?

• Ever sent a totally private email? Few people have. Did you know that your ISP administrator or network administrator may have the power to read all your email? (And probably, so does your boss!) But with Stealth Encryption, you can encrypt private text into a picture and send the picture as an email attachment. With no worries, as long as the key stays secret. With Stealth Encryption, you may privately email your broker, your spouse, or anyone -- from work, from anywhere!

• If you are an artist currently using digital watermarking, you should know that readily available software like StirMark can instantly remove watermarks, putting your creative works at risk from digital pirates. With Stealth Encryption software, computer artists can protect creative works by encrypting and hiding copyright information right into bmps or tiffs. The Stealth-encrypted data is invisible and uncrackable without your secret key!

• Now Human Resources directors may protect data by encrypting sensitive personnel records into employee photographs. Even if an employee hacks right into the personnel database, the secret keys protect personnel data from prying eyes!

• Because Stealth Encryption keeps data together with its' corresponding picture, real-life applications may include electronic photo albums, warehouse inventories, personal property lists, financial assets information, police mug books, even fingerprint catalogs or forensic information. How about medical records encrypted inside x-ray tiffs or bmps to help stop medical mixups?

• There are many more real world possibilities for security use of Stealth Encryption. It uses the Blowfish algorithm, which is such strong encryption that its successor, Two Fish, is under consideration for use by the U.S. federal government.

  Got an creative idea for using Stealth Encryption? Email your ideas!

What are encryption and steganography?

How does Stealth Encryption work?

Stealth Encryption software is a wizard application that takes you step-by-step through the process of hiding a file inside a picture and/or encrypting it. When hiding a message, the data bits in the message are hidden in the low-order bits of the pixels in the picture file. Twenty-four-bits-per-pixel .BMP or .TIF files are used, so that the hidden message data will not affect how the picture is viewed. Each pixel (twenty-four bits or three bytes) of the picture file can hide three bits of the message file.

What kind of data can you hide in the picture?

The message file can be any type of file: a program (.EXE file), a word-processing document, another picture - it doesn't matter. After you select the message file, the program will assist you in selecting a picture file by telling you how large the picture file must be and not letting you select one that is not large enough to hold your message.

In addition, the message file can be encrypted with Triple-DES as it is being hidden. You will be prompted for an encryption key phrase of up to 256 bytes (characters). The output picture file, with its hidden message, is also a 24-bit .BMP or .TIF file, and it is the same size as the input picture file.

The message can also be encrypted without being hidden in a picture. In that case, the output file will have a .DES extension and will be slightly larger than the original message file. Encrypted files are larger than the original file because an authentication code is added to the output file, so that whoever decrypts the file can tell if it has been modified.