Getting Started with Encrypt & Decrypt Plugin

With the Encrypt & Decrypt plugin you can easily encrypt your files. Moreover you can shred (wipe) files and directories and clean (shred) disk free space.

To encrypt means to convert from readable file using password or key file to unreadable file (encrypted file). Reverse process is decrypting, you need the same password or key file to get back the original readable file. Encrypted files are useful for storing sensitive data or for sending sensitive data using insecure channels.

To shred means to irreversibly delete. When you only delete a file, only reference to its data is deleted and the data itself remains on disk until another file's data overwrites it. You can use Undelete utility (e.g. the Undelete plugin) to recover deleted file. If you want to prevent undeleting of file, you need to shred it. Moreover shredding overwrites file data on disk many times with special patterns to make even advanced recovering of file data very difficult if not impossible (surely impossible for common undelete utilities).

See How It Works for list of used algorithms and principles.

See Archiver and Menu Extension sections in Using Plugins for a description of basic work with plugin archiver and menu extension.

This plugin uses the Crypto++ 4.1 library.