Malcolm Bryant and FreEPOC present jRC4, a small file encryption utility written in Personal Java. It will encode and decode files using the secure RC4 algorithm on your P800, PC or other compatible Java machine.
jRC4 can protect your sensitive data. It was particularly written for users of the P800 smartphone, so that sensitive data which has been downloaded from a PC (for example Word or Excel files) can be encrypted to protect the contents should your smartphone be lost. However with knowledge of the original password, the contents can easily be decrypted and viewed on the P800 Viewer.
Unlike some other protection software written for PDAs which uses proprietory file formats, jRC4 will encrypt or decrypt any file. Because jRC4 runs on a number of different platforms (anything which runs Personal Java) you can always access your data.
Alternatively, you can download "Freesafe", which is a password encryption package featuring the well-respected Twofish algorithm, which was one of the best AES candidates. Twofish was developed by Bruce Schneier and others.
Freesafe is written in Java. I've used it myself on my Sony-Ericsson P800 and it works fine. However, please be aware that the current version of Freesafe does not automatically shut down when you switch to another software package, or when you switch the phone off. Obviously, this is a security hole. The solution is to quit out of Twofish whenever you've finished using it.
In all other respects it's excellent. The author is working on a version that fixes the previously mentioned security holes, and it will be released at some point in the future. It's worth keeping an eye on for the future.
There are 3 possible versions of the Twofish algorithm ie Twofish-128, Twofish-192 and Twofish-256. Freesafe uses the 192-bit version of Twofish. Click here for full details of Freesafe and a link to download it:-
http://freesafe.sourceforge.net/faq.html
An updated version of FreeSafe for the Sony Ericsson P800 and P900 will be released in the next week or so. Amongst other features, the security vulnerability in the previous version has been fixed. Also, passwords are now sorted in alphabetical order. Click here to find out more about the new version:-
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=226494
The current version of FreeSafe is "0.2.4" dated March 2004. The updated version hasn't been uploaded yet, but when it is you can get it from here:-
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freesafe
FreeSafe "0.2.5" was released to the public on 4th September 2004. FreeSafe offers military grade encryption for passwords stored on your Sony Ericsson P800, P900 and other Java compatible phones. Download it from here:-
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freesafe
News update:-
FreeSafe "0.2.6" was released to the public on 26th September 2004. FreeSafe offers military grade encryption for passwords stored on your Sony Ericsson P800, P900 and other Java compatible phones. Download it from here:-
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freesafe
Amongst other features, FreeSafe:-
- uses the Twofish encryption algorithm (in 192-bit mode)
- alphabetically sorts entries
- automatically logs out (and re-encrypts your data) after 4 mins of inactivity
- allows SHA-1 and MD5 "one-time" passwords
It's free and it's good.