Tutorial – Protecting Your Precious Secret Files

When I ask this simple question to you:

Can you ever say that you have zero secrets to hide?

What do you have as an answer?

If you say “yes”, then the conversation ends right here.

However, if you answer otherwise, then let’s talk.

So, if I am to guess how you are securing your digital secrets, then these are the options, which are coming in my mind:

• Password Protection – but how will you password protect non-document assets like Images, Video, Audio, and all those files which don’t facilitate attaching passwords to them?
• Encrypt them – which is a great beginning, but how convenient is it to encrypt your files, besides can you do it independently or are dependent of the vendor platform or cloud services, who eventually know what you are hiding?
• Share Permissions – which is a foundational and bare minimum way to ensure that only authorized people access your files, but then what will you do when the access gets compromised?

There may be multiple other ways that you would opt for protecting your precious secret files.

If you have recently survived a data breach or a ransomware attack, then you must have realised, that in spite of having a strong and fortified perimeter doesn’t alone guarantee the safety of your digital secrets. The worst of the attacks are the ransomware attacks where you just don’t lose your precious files but are also forced to pay a ransom to the attackers who extort you by threatening to leak your secrets on the Dark-web, thus impacting your reputation and finances.

This illustration explains the multi-layered approach for securing your precious and confidential files.

Figure 1: DELOL Shield Multi-layered File Shielding

Shielding Files Through DELOL Shield Platform

DELOL Shield File-Shielding Platform is built on next generation 256 Bytes Factorial Entropy driven cryptographic encryption. As illustrated in Figure 1, every layer anticipates and counters different attack vectors.

• Key Generation: It begins with generating a key pair which comprises of Private and Public Keys with each key being of 256 bytes size.
• File Shielding: The Private Key is consumed by the DELOL Encoder as the Lineage Map for encrypting the file combined with the 4 Bytes salt i.e. the Ghost Signature, which transforms the file into a Binary Blob, appearing as Garbage.
• Securing the Keys: Just like other encryption approach, even with DELOL Shield, the weakest link are the keys. However DEOL Shield has a Convoy which is a high secure Transport Layer Packager which packages the keys by further encrypting them and locking through a Complex Password generated through EncodeMe Password Generator that transforms simple phrases into complicated passwords.

Step 1: Generating the Keys

1. Run DELOL-KeyGen.exe to create your .pvt and .pub key pair.
2. The name that you provide at the prompt will create two files
3. For example if you provide the name as “MyKeys”, it will generate “MyKeys.pvt” (Private Key) and “MyKeys.pub” (Public Key).
4. This creates the unique mathematical keys required for the oath language.

Never lose your .pvt and .pub key files. Losing  them will lead the files to be in an encrypted state forever and they can never be decrypted.

Figure 2: Generating DELOL Lineage Map Keys

Step 2: Shielding the Files (Encoding)

1. Run DELOL-Encoder.exe.
2. You can process single files or entire directories using wildcards (for example, *.* – process all files in the current folder and *.pdf – process all PDF documents).
3. Output is systematically saved to the “Encoded Files” folder.

The text files like JSON, TXT, CSS, HTML, etc. will appear to contain garbage texts, whereas the binary files like documents, PDF, presentations, videos, etc. will be reported to be “Corrupt” by their applications. You do not have to worry or even try to repair them through those applications. They are perfectly intact, but encrypted.

Figure 3: Shielding the Files thrugh DELOL Encoder

Figure 4: DELOL Encoder Shielding Status

Step 3: Recovering the Shielded Files (Decoding)

This is the step which the authorised recipient of the shielded files need to perform after downloading and instaling the DELOL Shield Platform.

1. Run DELOL-Decoder.exe.
2. Point it towards your encoded folder (For example, Enter encoded file name(s) or wildcard: Encoded Files*.*)
3. Results are saved to the “Decoded Files” folder.

You will need to verify the integrity of the decoded files as to whether they are restored in the same form as they were before.

Figure 5: DELOL Decoder – Shielded File Recovery

Step 4: Preparing the Public Key for Distribution

Once you have tested the successful decoding, you can delete the decoded files folder as it’s redundant. You should now prepare to share the Encoded Files through cloud, internal network or physical storage device, while securing the publlic key before transporting it to the authorized recipient through a different channel.

1. Ensure that there are no Key files in the Encoded Files Folder.
2. Copy the entire Encoded Files folder to the location where you want to transfer (online or offline storage device).
3. When you share the Encoded Files, ensure that you do not share any keys directly along with them.
4. You will then need to separately and securely share only the exact “.pub” file (Public Key) that was used for encoding those files.
5. To distribute the .pub key, run “DELOL-Convoy-Loader” and provide the pub key file name, the package file name and the password to securely package the key.
6. You will get a “.dcon” file which is a “Secured DELOL Convoy Package” that will securely store your keys during Transit.
7. To release the contents packaged within the “.dcon” file, run “DELOL-Convoy-Unloader” and provide the Conoy file name to unload and provide the password. The content will be unloaded to “Unloaded Assets” folder.

Remember this very seriously. Only the public key used during encryption will work for decrypting. Do not lose it or mix with other public keys. Also Never EVER share your “.pvt” file (Private Key) as that is your own key to be used for encryption. However if you lose the keys you will have to again perform the steps from the begining.

Setting Strong Password for Convoy Package

To ensure that your Convoy Package is highly secure, avoid weak breakable passwords. To generate a strong password you can use EncodeMe Password Generator. It saves you from the hassle of remembering complex password, instead you remember a secret phrase defined by you. So this way you do not need to share the password but that secret phrase separately with the authorized users, so that they get the right password by entering that phrase in EncodeMe.

Figure 6: Packagig the Public Key into High Security DELOL Shield Convoy (.dcon) package

This multi-layered technique fortifies your payload i.e. your confidential, secret and precious files in such a way that those files literally appear corrupt with their extensions and size remaining intact. Loding these shielded files on the cloud or local external storage which are prone to sabotage, will render the attack useless making the attackers frustrated on harvesting corrupt and garbage files. Even if they obtain the .dcon package that contains the keys, they still end up with another vault with a completely invisible keyhole.

Even with the software in place, keyfile locked within the .dcon convoy vault with highly frustrating to bruteforce DELOL Shield Unloader, this becomes a non-violent counter attack on Ransomware attackers and Data Thieves.