FAQ
Polar Crypto Component is the premium data protection tool for software developers. It supports the securest cryptographic standards and crypto systems. Includes full source code!
Click here to read General FAQ…
Tehnical Q&A
Do U.S. export laws concerning cryptographic software affect Polar Crypto in any way?
No. Polar Crypto is developed outside the U.S., where U.S. export laws do not apply.
What is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)?
TAES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is a symmetric cipher defined in Federal Information Processing (FIPS) Standard Number 197 in 2001 as the federal government approved encryption algorithm. The NSA has approved 128-bit AES for use up to SECRET level and 192-bit AES for use up to TOP SECRET level. AES is based upon the Rijndael algorithm, which was invented by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen.
What are the AES key sizes?
The AES will specify three key sizes: 128, 192 and 256 bits. In decimal terms, this means that there are approximately:
- 3.4 x (10^38) possible 128-bit keys;
- 6.2 x (10^57) possible 192-bit keys; and
- 1.1 x (10 ^77) possible 256-bit keys.
Could you tell me about the size of the password I have to use to efficiently encrypt a file? For example, I might use “123456” to encrypt a file. Will this file be better encrypted if I use, for example, “123456789”? What is the recommended size of the password? What is the max size of the password?
The whole story is quite simple; when longer passwords (crypto keys) are used the encryption is stronger. If you are using 128 bit AES algorithm and use “1234“ key than what you get is only 32 bits used and remaining 96 bits are filled with zeros. Regarding security, when “1234“password is used it is better to use 256 bit key rather then 128 bit key. Maximum length for 128 bit crypto key is 16 characters and if you enter a string longer than 16 characters only the first 16 are actually used.
What is the chance that someone could crack an AES key?
Assuming that one could build a machine that could recover 255 keys per second, then it would take that machine approximately 149 thousand-billion (149 trillion) years to crack a 128-bit AES key.
Does the Polar Crypto DLL has to be registered before it can be used?
No, DLL doesn’t have to be registered before using.
Will Polar Crypto Component work on 64bit version of Windows?
There should not be any problems running our component on 64bit Windows, Microsoft designed this OS to be backward compatible with 32-bit applications.
Is it possible to decrypt a file and store it to a buffer?
Yes, it is possible to decrypt a file and store it to a buffer. Have a look at the examples for Visual Studio C++.
We own a version of your Polar Crypto and we are trying to use it to decode a string that was sent to us by another company. They are using AES and we verified that encryption key several times and the problem is not there. We tried all different encoding formats and key length and still we are not getting anything returned. What is the problem?
In Polar Crypto we use hashing (800 times) over AES key. This is a usually security recommendation in cryptography and probably therefore you do not have compatibility with other AES key. Solution for you is to use same hashing on obtained key from another company or remove hashing over AES key from our source code.
Is there a migration path from the Crypto light to Polar Crypto full version?
To use the data encrypted with PolarCrypto Light in the application that uses Polar Crypto you have to use the correct padding and cipher mode. The padding is pcpPKCS5 and chipper mode is pcmCBC. Here is an example. You have the data encrypted with Light version stored on the disk in the file “mydata.enc” with password ”aaa”. This code uses Polar Crypto component.
Dim objDataIn As New CryptoData
Dim objDataOut As New CryptoData
'fill CryptoData object with the contents of file
objDataIn.ReadFromFile " mydata.enc ", pcfBinary
Dim pcKey As New CryptoKey
‘create AES key ,256 bits with password ‘aaa’
Set pcKey = Crypto1.DeriveKey("aaa", pcaAES, pcl256bit)
‘set the correct padding for the key
pcKey.Padding = pcpPKCS5
‘set the correct chipper mode for the key
pcKey.CipherMode = pcmCBC
‘decrypt
Set pcDataOut = pcKey.Decrypt(pcDataIn)
MsgBox "Decrypted string : " & pcDataOut.ToString(pcfBinary)
Does Polar Crypto support Unicode characters?
Polar Crypto supports Unicode characters.
Can I use e-tokens with Polar Crypto for digital signing of documents?
At this moment Polar Crypto does not have that feature.
