Erio-EN

This program is freeware - there is no charge associated with Erio-EN.

There is a lot talked about the transmission of information over the Internet and the need to encode such information.

There are basically two requirements.

The public requirement is the really clever one. It allows two entities to establish a secure connection even though they might have never dealt with each other before. Say you wish to buy something over the Internet. You establish a connection and place your order. At some point you need to make the payment. In a well-ordered site, this part of the connection will be encrypted so that if the transmission is interrupted by another party, they will not be able to decode it.

The mathematics for such encryption are complex. Probably the best way to describe this is to imagine that the other party sends you a safebox that is open and they keep the key. You put your money or whatever, in it, lock the box (it does not require a key to lock it) and send it back.

The second possible requirement is for point-to-point encryption. In this case something is being sent by arrangement but there is a danger that the (sensitive) information could be seen by a third party.

For point-to-point encryption anything goes. A successful, if somewhat tedious, scheme depends on sending the page, line, character co-ordinates taken from a book to someone who by arrangement, will decode the information using an identical book. If coded groups are being sent, such a scheme is wasteful in that for each character you need to send three groups of information. However, since most of the time one would be sending ordinary words, a saving is likely. For example the main rule could be 'take the character pointed to by the co-ordinates but if it is a space, take the following word as a whole unless the space is preceded by a full stop in which case it IS a space'.

Erio-EN is a point-to-point encryption program. It will 'mix' an encoding string of characters with the text that you want to send. The encoding string is something that you can send the recipient beforehand, or by arrangement, they would know where to look for it in say, a covering letter.

The 'mix' is not the only encoding mechanism implemented in Erio-EN but no details of the encoding procedure will be divulged.

WARNINGS!

If for some reason the plain original data should be lost. I will NOT be able to retrieve any information. This differs from Erio-PP where retrieval (by me) might be possible.


Installation

Unzip the download specifying a folder C:\Erio Any programs from Erio Services can co-exist within the same folder.

The download will unzip to one file. ErioEN.exe is the program.

If you are using the program a lot you may want to create a short-cut to Erio-EN on your desktop.

To uninstall simply delete the ErioEN.exe file and any desktop shortcut you may have created.


Problems

If Erio-EN does not run, please see the note in the Software page regarding run-time modules.


Instructions

There are no instructions included in the download but the program is very easy to use.

You may want to print these instructions.


General

The encoding string must be greater than four characters. There is little point in making it particularly long. Leading and trailing spaces will not count and will not be used during encoding.

You can use any characters you want including digits and punctuation marks. However do bear in mind that if the string is being sent as part of a covering letter, it should read appropriately.

The body material that you want encoded could be anything. It could be a readable document or a program or a picture. The only limitation is that it should be less than 32700 characters long.

For filing you can use any Windows acceptable filename and extension. It is usually a good idea to limit filenames to eight letter/digit characters or less for compatibility with older systems.

No two encoding runs, even with the same coding string, are likely to end up as identical coded documents.


Encoding

Prepare the information you wish to send and save it. Make a note of the filename and where it is stored.

Prepare an encoding characters string (see above) and save it.

Run Erio-EN.

Retrieve your encoding characters string and either type it or 'copy and paste' it into the the Coding string box. These are the characters that will be 'mixed' with the document you want to encode.

Click Get plain, navigate to the file you want to encode, and click OK. The file will be loaded and can be seen in the box but will only make sense if it was a readable document!

You could do some simple editing to the data on screen but it would be unwise to do this to any content other than a readable document.

When loaded, the source path and filename will appear in the box beside the 'Save plain' button. The same path and filename will appear in the box beside the 'Save coded' button but with the extension '.enc' as a suggested destination. You can modify the destination details if you wish.

Click Encode. The information will be encoded and appear in its coded form in the bottom box. Note that the length of the coded form would seem to bear no relation to the original!

The 'Save coded' button will be highlighted to indicate that this is likely to be the next operation you will want to do.

Modify the destination address at the bottom of the screen if you wish. You might want to change the automatically inserted '.enc' extension to something else.

Click Save coded. Your document will be saved and is now ready to pass on to the recipient. Do not forget that you also need to send the recipient a copy of the encoding string.


Decoding

Ensure that you have available the encoding characters string that was used to encode the document. Type-in or 'copy and paste' this string into the Coding string box.

Click Get coded, navigate to the file you want to decode, and click OK.

When loaded, the source path and filename will appear in the box beside the 'Get coded' button. The same path and filename will appear in the box beside the 'Save plain' button but with the extension '.enp' as a suggested destination. You can modify the destination details if you wish.

Click Decode. The file will decoded. On screen, the decoded file will only make sense if it was readable to begin with! The 'Save plain' button will be highlighted to indicate that this is likely to be the next operation you will want to do.

Modify the destination address in the middle of the screen if you wish.

Click Save plain. The file will now be available for examination by other programs.




Download ErioEN.ZIP (8k max)

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Page last modified on 20th June 2007