From: "Thomas J. Bryce" <tjb@acpub.duke.edu>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 94 02:00:36 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RELEASE: Secure Edit a0.3.1 for Macintosh
Message-ID: <199411251000.FAA18050@carr2.acpub.duke.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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Miyako Software(tm) presents...

            SECURE EDIT(tm) VERSION ALPHA 0.3 FOR MACINTOSH

SECURE EDIT is an editor designed for editing sensitive text buffers. It is
designed to prevent plaintext from ever being written to disk, even
if only momentarily. You might fail to overwrite or encrypt such plaintext
properly, or your opponent might be able to retrieve some of the information
even though you wiped it (see docs for details). Word Processors generally 
create temp and scratch files that leave plaintext on your drive whether 
you like it or not. Secure edit fixes this problem. Sometimes you need to 
quit in a hurry and have all your data encrypted and saved. Or you might 
prefer to have your files encrypted at all times so that you never forget to
re-encrypt a file you worked on. Secure edit sports the following features 
to serve these and your other data security needs:

* Plaintext is never written to disk - Secure Edit locks all sensitive 
  buffers in memory so that virtual memory will never swap them to disk.
  This includes the text you are editing as well as any encryption keys
  in use.

* Secure Edit never creates plaintext temp or scratch files, ever.

* Secure Edit offers the option of saving files directly in encrypted format
  so you never have plaintext on the hard drive.
  
* Your data is compressed and encrypted in RAM with the IDEA algorithm, then
  written to disk in encrypted format. The key is the MD5 hash of your 
  passphrase. This is the same basic technique used in PGP conventional 
  encryption. The SHA hash and the MD5 hashes are used to create information
  against which to validate keys without compromising their security. See 
  docs for more details.
  
* Secure Edit can mantain a secure, private clipboard, interconverting with
  the system clipboard only when you use OPTION-cut,copy, and paste. This
  prevents the system from getting a copy of your sensitive data and possibly
  writing it to disk, or leaving it around for another user to see.
  
* Secure Edit can open foreign text files, and DOD wipe them on request when
  you save the file in encrypted format.
  
* Secure Edit offers a default passphrase option so you only need to enter 
  your passphrase once. It also offers the option of validating your phrase
  against secure validation information that can be used to check that you
  have entered your standard pass phrase, but which cannot be used to recover
  the passphrase by an opponent. This prevents you from saving under a
  bad passphrase and losing data.
  
* Secure Edit offers a time-out option, whereby it will save all files and
  quit after a certain idle time period
  
* Secure Edit offers an option-quit feature, whereby it will assume it is 
  okay to save all files, and save and quit as quickly as possible
  
* As far as I am personally aware, Secure Edit does not have any bugs which
  could cause data loss. However, as I am the only person who has used it
  until now, I am considering it an ALPHA TEST RELEASE, version a 0.3. Hence,
  store important information at your own risk. Save regularly!
  
* Secure Edit alpha 0.3 is available to U.S. citizens in the U.S. at an 
  ITAR-compliant site near you. I'm presently uploading it to ripem.msu.edu
  and others.

* The source code is, of course, available for your inspection.
 
* Questions about Secure Edit should be directed to me, at <tjb@acpub.duke.edu>

Thanks for your attention.

Tom Bryce

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Please note: the correct version number is now a0.3.1