AES Metal2.03

File security over the web is of great concern nowadays, especially with most activity taking place on the information superhighway. However, there are various methods through which you add extra security to files, or at least give attackers a bit of a hassle, methods such as encryption, and this is what AES Metal is all about.

Contains tool to encrypt with passphrase

For starters, the application is portable, so there’s no installation involved to make it work. This means you can have it stored and used from a USB flash drive as a personal encryption tool. Moreover, it contains a total of three utilities, each dedicated to a particular area of expertise. They’re completely independent.One of the utilities you encounter in this bundle is AES Protect. It represents a regular encryption tool, which can easily be used by individuals of all levels of experience. It can both encrypt and decrypt files, but you need to remember the passphrase. Sadly, there’s no option to generate a random, powerful encryption key.

Generate custom, powerful encryption keys via GUI or command line

Second on the list is AES Metal. Although it has most of the functionality of the utility mentioned above, this one is mostly oriented towards testing and understanding the capabilities of AES encryption. Here you get to create your own initialization vector and key to be used for encryption, unlike Protect, which secures content based on a passphrase.Source and destination files also need to be configured. Requirement fields can change, depending on the mode you choose, with options for Counter, Galois Counter, Output Feedback, Cipher Feedback (128), Cipher Block Chaining, Electronic Codebook, and Propagating Cipher Block Chaining.You can use keys with 128, 192, or 256 bits. On the bright side of things, the application lets you save binary files containing the initialization vector and key to be used with other files. It’s also possible to have random values generated.Last item on the list is AES Command. On the downside of things, this utility does not contain a GUI and is used from a command line interface. On the other hand, it has the capabilities of both AES Protect and AES Metal, but can also hold a larger passphrase, PBKDF2 key derivation, and encrypt output file header.

A few last words

All things considered, we can state that AES Metal, together with its other two counterparts, make up for a powerful encryption solution. It can be used for day-to-day activities, thanks to Protect, while Metal and Command deliver enhanced functionality and ways of generating secure encryption codes.