 Interscope BlackBox 1.3
 (formerly known as Interscope DES Encoder/Decoder)

 Copyright  1996-1998 Interscope Ltd.
 All rights reserved.

 Please check out http://www.interscope.ro/BlackBox/blackbox.asp for the latest
 additions, help and newer versions of Interscope BlackBox.

 Interscope BlackBox is a small and fast file encryption utility which can be
 installed on either Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0, and it provides quick encryption
 and/or decryption of files or whole folders from the context menu.

 It uses the DES (Data Encryption Standard) algorythm with an 56-bit key. Even if today
 DES doesn't represent a state-of-art encryption technology anymore, it's still more than 
 suitable for file encryption/decryption assuming that you do not want to protect military-scale
 top secret data and you stick with a healthy password management scheme (you do not write it down,
 don't use easy-to-guess passwords and change your password from time to time).

 The key management scheme implemented by Interscope BlackBox uses a pretty simple but extremely
 efficient method of password storage. In fact, it doesn't store your passwords together with your 
 files, so that they cannot be deducted from an encrypted file by any means. Of course this also means,
 that once you've lost one of your passwords, all file(s) encrypted with it are locked and 
 unaccessible. So, take care with your passwords.

 The program was designed to provide security against passive attacks, meaning that once the data is
 encrypted, it is secure. But you should make sure that the encryption/decryption is done in a "clean" 
 environment (e.g. keyboard watchers and the like). Also, after the encryption/decryption is 
 finished any relevant used memory is overwritten with random data before being released, and also 
 any temporary file is similarily wiped out with random data before being deleted. So, we want to 
 think it is secure enough for everyday's use.

 If you are interested in more powerful encryption methods, you can take a look at the public key 
 encryption algorythms which are more recent than DES and tending to became the de facto standard in 
 today's cryptography. One more word on public key algorythms: yes, they are better in terms of security 
 than DES but they are also more computing-power demanding, hence (much) slower.



 Please do not forget that Interscope BlackBox is a shareware program, and as so, if you like it we 
 would like you to register your copy. See Order.txt for information on registering your copy 
 of Interscope BlackBox.

 If you have any problems with Interscope BlackBox, or find any bugs you can send your questions and 
 observations to BlackBox@interscope.ro, and we will try to have some answers for you and keep your
 feature requestests in mind when releasing a new version. You can also submit a bug report directly on
 our site at http://www.interscope.ro/feedback/bugreport.asp.

 Interscope is working hard to further enhance this product, so if you want to be kept up to date with
 the latest development of Interscope BlackBox, we invite you to check back often to the 
 Interscope Homepage (http://www.interscope.ro/BlackBox/) from where you can download updates as 
 soon as they are released.

