Using Progress ENCODE for Encryption and Decryption

Chris Kelleher

Administrator
Staff member
I´ve found an interesting way of <STRONG>using Progress encode function not only for encryption but for decryption</STRONG> too. The idea is to use it in a different way, not for directly generating an encrypted code, but to use its output as a random sequence (and thus a random number) like the random function does with a significant difference: it´s possible to control the original seed of the random values. This seed can be a text string which is what the encode function expects to receive. So this seed can be a key entered by the user upon which all the encryption and decryption will be based. Based on this idea I´ve created an utility which is very simple. It´s a public domain program so that it can be freely used and changed. It´s made for encrypting simple text files which doesn´t contain special characters (*.txt, *.bat, *.htm and Progress source code files for example). This condition is due to some methods used by this program that may add / modify / remove asc 10 and asc 13 characters and modify null characters (asc 0). I am sure it´s possible to create an utility that can hand these special characters but it wasn´t my intention because I wanted to be able to directly view and edit the texts to be encrypted or after a decryption. It´s name is Cripto (which comes from "encryption" in Portuguese). Submitted by <A href="maimailto:pmenegh@uol.com.br">Paulo Meneghelli Jr</A>.
 
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