I have now released version 1.1 of my popular encrypted notepad application SafePad. Version 1.1 focuses on many of the requests I have had from users. These are mainly around usability.

Safe Pad 1.1 : Text editor to securely protect your documents using Triple AES

What is SafePad

SafePad is a simple FREE text editor that lets you encrypt your documents using 3 rounds of AES encryption (Advanced Encryption Standard). To protect your document you have to provide 2 passwords. Passwords have always been a problem when it comes to security as users tend to pick a password that is easy for them to remember. This also means that the password is most likely easy to crack. By using 2 passwords and performing multiple rounds of encryption, it makes it much harder to crack the passwords. If someone manages to crack password 1, all they will get back is encrypted text, so it would be very hard to them to know they have cracked that password.

Picking strong yet easy to remember passwords is essential when protecting your files. If your passwords are easy to guess or can be cracked by a brute force search then you are leaving your data open to being stolen. Here is a good article over at wolfram.org with some good advice on picking strong passwords.

SafePad is ideal for protecting the following types of information:

• Passwords to other sites: When you have to create passwords for different sites and systems, people tend to stick to the same passwords as they are easy to remember. It is a better idea to create unique and strong passwords and then store them in Safe Pad. You only then need to remember the 2 Safe Pad passwords.
• Banking and Card Details: Banking log on details and card information is generally quite hard to remember. You can safely store them in SafePad protected by your 2 master passwords instead of having them written down on paper somewhere.
• Any Other Secrets: SafePad is a text editor so you can write anything you like in your document. This is great for storing your ideas and plans that you want to keep secret. Theft of commercial secrets is big business, so don’t open yourself up to the risk.

Features

The primary goal of Safe Pad is to offer a way to protect your documents from prying eyes. SafePad offers the following features:

Password Strength Indicator in SafePad

• Encrypt your documents using 3 rounds of AES encryption based on the strength of 2 passwords.
• Password entry form has a password strength indicator.
• Rich text editor with familiar word processing formatting controls and font selection.
• Drag and drop files from explorer into your document so they get encrypted too.
• Low contrast themes to make the text harder to read on the screen if people are looking over your shoulder.

Why Safe Pad

With the revelations of government snooping by the NSA and GCHQ hitting the press over the last year thanks to the leaks from Edward Snowden, it has become obvious that if you care about your privacy in the digital world, then you need to take steps to protect your data. I developed SafePad to be an easy to use tool to help ordinary users protect their secrets. SafePad is completely FREE of charge. I don’t believe you should pay for privacy and I don’t think companies should be charging for encryption products like this aimed at normal everyday computer users.

SafePad is also open source, which means anyone can look at the source code if they choose too. Offering full transparency is the best way to help guard your privacy as the source code can be subject to peer review. The security of Safe Pad is based purely on the strength of the passwords that you chose to use. SafePad uses encryption algorithms that are deemed as standards (AES) and have already been subject to analysis by experts in their field.

When I developed the first version of SafePad I had no idea if anyone would want to use it. I put it up on CodePlex (Microsoft’s Open Source sharing site) so that anyone could find it. So far over 800 people at the time of writing have downloaded the application, and many users have offered suggestions. Version 1.1 addresses many of the suggestions from users. The majority of the new features are around usability.

Change Log in Safe Pad 1.1

The following changes have been made to Safe Pad since version 1.0.

• Added loader factory to support older versions of the file format to make it backwards compatible. If you save a file in an older file format, it will be saved in the latest format.
• Add a font selector and font size selector to the main tool-bar.
• Password entry dialog box now accepts Return key on each text box.
• Make the save button/menu item act more like a normal Save Button. Also added a “Save As” menu item that will always prompt for a password and file-name.
• If you try to exit with unsaved changes, prompt to save.
• Add password strength meter to password input box. This uses rules like using numbers, mixed case, punctuation symbols and length as indicators. The meter will also do a white-list check against common password along with letter substituted versions.
• Add Status bar to the bottom of the window to display common prompts like new document, loaded and saved etc.
• Save window state to XML settings file.
• Add themes menu. This allows you to select a low contrast (dark or light) theme. This is to make seeing text difficult for anyone overlooking your screen. You can also pick a custom background and foreground colour.
• Added a new about dialog box.
• Remove Install Shield project. I will distribute as a zip file for the moment until I build a WIX installer.
• Allow the dragging and dropping of files into the document. The whole document is compressed before it is encrypted.
• Add Zoom factor menu to the status bar.
• Fixed a crash bug where selecting text that contains multiple fonts would cause the application to crash.

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