Welcome to Crow. Crow is a simple desktop application intended for use in those cases where an applet is not possible or desired. Crow uses the same core of Blackbird for the encryption panels and processes, but can simply decrypt messages created by either program. It's intended to run as an application, meaning that it need not run in a browser. In cases with older computers that might have an old browser version unable to run the applet or the javascrip functions, Crow can be put to use, and due to this presumption for this case Crow uses a very basic interface - no bells and whistles - to avoid new user features that older computers might not have.

Using Crow is easy. If you already use the Blackbird applet or have seen those tutorials, then you already know how to encrypt with Crow. Crow uses the entire Blackbird applet at its core. For the use with Crow, Blackbird needed only a few additional functions.

Crow is launched from the command line, using java -jar Crow.jar is simple but on a Windows system in most cases you need only double click on the file called Crow.jar. Shortcuts can be set to this file and put on the desktop or the start menu. Linux applications are very close in launching.

Crow has a very simple interface:

Like the Blackbird applet, Crow is an application (it needs not run in a browser) that can do pretty much what Blackbird does. You can encrypt messages with it and choose from several output formats - HTML, BB Code, and flat output - to put in blog posts or whatever else method you choose to deliver them. The interface for encrypting is the same as in Blackbird (it is Blackbird). Even the Menu is the same.

Crow has a neat output feature. You can change the text size using the scrolling list of text sizes to the right of the Plain Text output. You need only select a number.

In some cases an encryption system or algorithm requires a password (as with Twofish) or an initialization vector (as with CodeMeter CBC mode). These are pairings with an identifier name (the person who encrypted the message with their password) and the password or initialization vector. Before you can decrypt messages that rely on passwords or vectors, you must enter them into the program beforehand.

When selecting this menu item, this dialog will appear:

Enter the identifier and password/vector and click the Add button.

Suppose the desired encryption to use in this case was TwoFish. Selecting Twofish from the menu of encryption panels will pull up the Twofish encryption panel.

You can select any kind of output that is available for your needs, and this will work exactly as it does in the applet. In this case the "flat" output is selected, as it could be intended for those cases where the Blackbird applet may not be usable or desired.

Or course whoever sees of receives the message will need to decrypt it. Suppose they use crow to decrypt the message - therefore the receiver will need to know both the identifier and the password to decrypt the message. Using Crow, the receiver will add the ID-Password pairing using the entry panel from the Management menu:

Notice there there are multiple names? That's to make entry easier. Because initilization vector or password to Identifier pairings tend to be for Symmetric Encryption, meaning that the password is secret but shared amongst those keeping it, the person who used a particular password to encrypt a message must share it with someone else for them to decrypt it. In this case, Bob, Alice, and Joe are sharing a password, so to decrypt messages from them requires that one password. Putting all three names in the identifier entry field will save time.

And when the flat text is pasted into the lower Cypher Text entry area along the bottom, and the Decrypt button at right is clicked, the message is now decrypted and displayed above:

It does not matter what does the encrypting or decrypting - Crow uses the same encryption code as Blackbird. Crow is intended for those applications where use of an applet is not possible, such as with machines having older browsers that cannot handle the applet well enough, or where Java is disabled for security reasons.

Suppose CodeMeter is to be used. That too, just like in the applet, has it's own control panel for encrypting messages:

In this case CodeMeter uses an initialization vector and an identifier, similar to Twofish (both as using AES actually but the Blackbird core creates an initialization vector in Twofish by deriving parts of the password). Naturally with CodeMeter the on-board chip does the work, and so a License Entry (in this case 10:13) is used.

Of course, as with Twofish, and any other symmetric or key-oriented encryption that may require that a specific key or vector needs to be attached to an owner of such data, the pairing must be entered into the program using the same entry panel from the Management menu:

And as expected, when the identifier and vector are correct, the same encrypted message generated in the Control Panel for CodeMeter can be decrypted in the program if it is pasted into the Cypher Text area and the Decrypt button is clicked.

Of course ROT13 is simpler, since no Password/Vector - ID pairings are needed. The drawback is that there being no identifier, the source of the message is not displayed.

And such message, when pasted into the Cypher Text box and decrypted, is handled thusly:

PAD encryption, and the others, are handled in the same way. However it should be noted: Crow can only decrypt flat output, the simple comma-delimited format. So when intending for a message to be decrypted by Crow (when creating the encrypted message with Crow or Blackbird), you must select the "Flat" output.

Having to enter your list of known passwords or initialization vectors and their identifiers every time you use Crow would be tedious to the extreme. Therefore there are two menu options to assist in that.

"Decrypt and Load" and "Encrypt and Save" are two options in the Manage Menu to consider if you have a lot of password/vector ID pairings to handle. Use of these options are quite simple. You will see a dialog box asking for a file name, to save as or load from, and afterwards you are promped for a password for either direction. However there is one difference: when you load the file, you must provide your User Identifier. This is the "handle" you use for those encryption entities requiring an identifier. If you are using encryption that does not need it, you can enter a space in this field, otherwise you must use the identifier that links you to your stored password from the file. You will not need to enter an identifier to save the data later.

One of the features of Crow that can make things easier is how the program will automatically load your User Identifier and password/initialization vector into the control Panel of an Encryption Entity of Blackbird that requires this kind of information. Crow keeps track of this, checking for the chosen system and if this is found to need that information, your User ID and the related information is automatically loaded. You can change this simply by putting the information into the fields, but left alone, your User ID will be filled in and the label for the Password/Vector entry will indicate that the password is already loaded.

For saving files containing your identifier-password/vector pairings, Crow is using Twofish symmetric AES for protection. This means two things: 1) the password you use to encrypt a file is the same password you use to decrypt it and 2) it needs to be a STRONG password. The strength of open source software is not in the program itself being a secret, but in the randomness of a key. Simple 123-123 numer-letter arrangements with a non alphanumeric in the middle (this is on average the case, admit it) can be brute-force hacked in minutes. Remember, all of the passwords used by you and your associates can be guarded by one password. So if that one password is weak, all of them will be compromised.
This second dialog below is what you see when saving your collection of passwords. A password is needed for this as well. Note that this is symmetric encryption, so whatever password you use to encrypt a file, it must be used to decrypt it. You need not have to overwrite your old file, and if you don't, the old file is still encrypted with the old password. So keep careful track of what password you use for what file.

To give you an idea of a weak password versus a strong one:

Yes the weak password might seem like something you could never guess or figure out - and most people don't even use anything that complex. A brute-force hacking program, using a very fast modern desktop (and the speed of computing power doubles every two years) can crack it in minutes. But the strong password can be extremely difficult to crack. The only limitations against a strong password are time and computing power. The more complex the password, the longer it will take, requiring more power. If what you are keeping secret is not worth the cost of cracking it, chances are any entity with interest in cracking the password will not pursue the matter.

(Let us consider the folly of spending thousands in computer and man hours to reveal a message that starts with "There once was a man from Nantucket....")

In addition to saving your own password file and reloading it later, you can create files for others to load, or load others that are given to you. This feature of Crow lets you save password-protected files for you to gove to others whome you want to give passwords to, and they can do this for you. As before, the same password used to encrypt the file is the same one that decrypts it. The menu options that enable this are part of the Manage menu, seen here.

Either selection will at first display a File dialog box for you to find either the incoming password file, or the name of the outgoing file.

This is similar to the password entry box you use to load your file of passwords. However an identifier is not needed in this case. If your enter the incorrect password on loading, these additional passwords will not load.

Using the Blackbird Core, PAD Key Encryption is also possible with Crow. Given the same features found in the applet, for loading PAD Keys, encrypting with them, and getting the status of the used PAD keys, it works the same as before. Here are the PAD Key Options in Crow, which come from the Blackbird Encryption Core:

The PAD tutorial explains how to use these menu options. When Blackbird was originally designed, it was as a Java Applet. Therefore it was assumed that the computer it was running on might not be a "home" computer, so it was designed so that the user can open the PAD Key file, copy the contents, and paste them into the PAD Key Load Panel.
Now Crow offers another way to load PAD Keys:

The Load Pad Keys option of the Manage Menu will open a File Dialog Box that allows you to browse to the PAD Key file. Normally the MINK program that generates PAD sequences will end a PAD Key File with either ".encrypted" or ".plain" respectively for those PAD Files that contain encrypted or plain sequences. If a file of encrypted sequences is selected, a simple dialog box will appear for the password needed to decrypt those sequences. This will no happen for a plain file of sequences.

It's still up to you to get the PAD Key stats from the program and manage the status of your sequences in MINK.

Remember: Crow uses the core of Blackbird, so if you can encrypt with one, it's the same interface as with the other. The only limitation on decryption is that Blackbird can only decrypt messages that come in the HTML format and Crow can only decrypt messages in the comma-delimited flat output.