So please try to remember the file password(which was used in the encryption process) to decrypt/open the old encrypted files.įor more info about Password Reset: and This is by design, it’s just this situation that AxCrypt is made for and it works like this even if you actually are the original owner of the file. Unfortunately, if you do not know the password for an AxCrypt-encrypted file you cannot open it, even if you can sign in to the account. Please note that we cannot provide support beyond this. If you think you almost know the password, we have simple software allowing you to try to find your password, and you can download the most recent version from and read of how to use it at. Ok, I need to write this up with a few illustrations -)ĪxCrypt will allow the users to decrypt the encrypted file with the original password which is used for encryption. The file can now only be opened with two passwords (but actually in three ways):ġa) The original password used when the file was encrypted: ‘NewGood2Go’.ġb) The password to Alice’s AxCrypt ID: ‘NewGood2Go’.Ģ) The password to Bob’s AxCrypt ID: ‘Bob4Ever’. Since you changed your AxCrypt sign in, you’re now using the password ‘NewGood2Go’ as the ‘original’ password. This causes ‘CoolStuff-txt.axx’ to be re-encrypted. This is what I mean that the file can always be decrypted with the original password used to (re-)encrypt the file.įinally, you Alice decide to open the file and edit it. The situation we now have is that the file ‘CoolStuff-txt.axx’ can be opened with three different passwords:ġ) The original password used when the file was encrypted: ‘Secret4Alice’.Ģ) The password to Alice’s AxCrypt ID: ‘NewGood2Go’.ģ) The password to Bob’s AxCrypt ID: ‘Bob4Ever’. This causes your (Alice’s) AxCrypt ID to be re-encrypted with the new password. Now you (Alice) change your AxCrypt password to ‘NewGood2Go’. Bob uses ‘Bob4Ever’ as his password for AxCrypt, so that’s the password that he is using to open the file. It can also be decrypted by Bob, since he has access to his private AxCrypt ID part, and can thus also decrypt one of the three copies of the master key embedded and encrypted in the file. It can now be decrypted with the password ‘Secret4Alice’ since it for one can decrypt the master key directly in the file, but since that is also the key to the encrypted AxCrypt ID you have, the master key can also be decrypted using that. Now the master key is encrypted three times in the same file: once using your password ‘Secret4Alice’, once using the ID and finally also using AxCrypt ID. You sign in to AxCrypt with ‘Secret4Alice’.ĪxCrypt generates a master key and encrypts ‘CoolStuff.txt’ into ‘CoolStuff-txt.axx’, and embeds the encrypted master key twice: once using your password ‘Secret4Alice’, and once using your AxCrypt ID. You have an AxCrypt password for : Secret4Alice Let’s for this example also say that you’re sharing the key with one recipient. Now, if you change the password for your AxCrypt account, what really happens is that the secret (private) part of your AxCrypt ID is re-encrypted with your new password. – If you use the key sharing feature, the same master key will be encrypted once for each recipient you share the key to the file with. So for each file, the master key is encrypted at least twice – once with your password, and once with the sharing (public) part of your AxCrypt ID. – Your own AxCrypt ID is also used to encrypt the master key. This is used for the key sharing feature, where an encrypted file can be shared with others and they can open it with their own passwords. – With AxCrypt 2, you also get an AxCrypt ID which in technical terms is a RSA 4096-bit key pair. In AxCrypt 2, this is the password you used to sign in to AxCrypt with. – This master key, is in turn encrypted essentially with your password. It’s called the Master Encryption Key in AxCrypt, in the literature it might be called a Session Key. – The actual key used to encrypt the file is a purely random 128 or 256 bit key generated internally by AxCrypt. With AxCrypt 2, there are other factors involved as well. Perhaps a better wording than “the original password used to encrypt it” would be the “the password used when the file was most recently (re-)encrypted”. Ok, it’s a little more complicated but I usually try to simplify it with the statement “An AxCrypt-encrypted file will always be possible to open if you know the original password used to encrypt it”.
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