News

CryptoBola JPEG can be started with command line parameters

Starting with version 2.1.0.1, CryptoBola JPEG accepts command line parameters for the function (-i for Embed, -x for Extract) and/or for the JPEG basis file specification in the form of -b device:path\filename.

Now a shortcut can be created to use CryptoBola JPEG for example as an address book even simpler than before.

See Starting the program.

The US and the Canadian governments attacking information privacy

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a new rule expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The ruling is a reinterpretation of the scope of CALEA and will force Internet broadband providers and certain Voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers to build backdoors into their networks that make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap them.

The government will mandate building/implementing insecure backdoors into the networks of broadband providers, thereby annihilating the privacy and secrecy of communications.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have to record all communications in order to be able to satisfy the secret services' need for always more and more information about the citizens.

In Canada, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler unveiled plans of legislation, that would require Internet service providers to put all Internet communications, including chat rooms, e-mails, text messages and Internet telephony, under surveillance at the request of law-enforcement agencies who obtain a court order. Police can already use court orders to request Internet communication, but service providers are not required to monitor the Internet, often leaving gaps in the data available to authorities.

The legislation would require all service providers to create the technical capability to intercept every point of Internet communication.

Facit: steganography becomes more important than ever.

CryptoBola JPEG works undetectably

Introduced with Version 2.0.2.1, CryptoBola JPEG does not create or update any records in Windows' registry if the program is started from any removable device, like CD, floppy disk, memory card, removable hard disk, etc.

CryptoBola JPEG records the license key and the appearance settings (color scheme, etc.) in the registry, if started from a fix disk.

The presence of these records in the registry reveals, that CryptoBola JPEG has been used on that system. To avoid this side-effect, the program has to be copied on some removable storage before the first usage, and started from there. If the settings have been recorded already, they can be deleted by regedit in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/CryptoBola (the entire key should be deleted).

The downside of this approach is, that the license key has to be specified each time the program gets started. On the other hand, the program uses only minimal resource (memory) when started but not active, i.e. it can be kept active all day and used repeatedly, without having to enter the license key repeatedly.

Password management, address book, diary, etc. available directly from CryptoBola JPEG

Starting with Version 2, CryptoBola JPEG offers a set of applications for the preparation of data before embedding and for the processing of it after extraction. The advantages of using these applications are

• simplified work flow: there is no need to start another application and create a file to pass the data between CryptoBola JPEG and that application,
• enhanced secrecy: the integrated applications are working with in-memory data. After finishing processing, the memory areas will be cleared before being released, the decoded data does not remain accessible. In contrast to this, when a file will be created for embedding or from extraction, it has to be cleaned up properly after processing. Keep in eyes, that deleting a file does not destroy the content, only specialized programs do. The best encoding method is useless, if someone leaves the unencoded data around.

See the chapter Integrated applications for detailed description of the features and how to use them.

Home Modified: 2004-08-29