e-Crypt Engine 2.0

Author: Einhugur Software Price: $15 (includes many other plugins) Download: Einhugur classes and plugins

  e-Crypt is a new entry into a line of Einhugur plugins that have existed as long as the plugin format itself. This particular plugin aims to provide simple, fast, and powerful encrypting/encoding through REALbasic, and it succeeds on all accounts.

  At its base, encoding is fairly simple: taking data, changing it, and being able to change it back again. Simple as it may seem, there are an infinite number of ways to do it, ranging from full DSL encryption, all the way down to a simple "change A to 1, B to 2, etc." system.

  Though not as powerful as some forms of encryption, e-Crypt does a very good job of providing a simple and fast mechanism to encrypt data. Data encrypted with e-crypt looks like gibberish, even after intense attempts to crack the code. Happy with the effectiveness of encryption, I went on to see how it was used.

  Encryption and Decryption abilities are provided by two commands: Encrypt and Decrypt. These each take the same type of parameters, and either encrypt or decrypt them (guess which one does which...). The four parameters are the actual data to encrypt/decrypt, the number of bytes to affect (usually, all of them), the password, and the offset (where to start encrypting/decrypting). Using it, you can encrypt half of a file with one password, and the other half with a different one—and it wouldn't even be hard! That would sure confuse a lot of people...

  However, the desired effect for encrypting a string is usually for the entire string to be encrypted at the same time. The ability to set a starting point and offset is nice, but it would be even nicer if there were seperate commands that simply assumed that you wanted to use the whole string, and didn't force you to constantly type Encrypt text, len(text), "•••••", 0 and instead let you type Encrypt text, "•••••". However, if this is all I have to complain about, then this is certainly an excellent product. After all, you could make a module that let you omit the extra parameters in about a minute.

  e-Crypt isn't limited to encryptiing though! It can also encode strings. The encode methods take a string, and reformat it to only use certain characters—something that can be VERY useful on the internet. If this sounds like binhexing to you, then you're right! The principles are basically the same, except that e-crypt gives you more flexibility.

  This plugin provides excellent encryption that is simple to use. I have almost no complaints about the performance and usability of e-Crypt, except for the small, monospaced manual.So, for only $15, you can have powerful encryption and encoding services in RB, and to top it all off, you'll get about a dozen other excellent plugins, many of which I hope to review in the future.