Working with Key Phrases

Mircryption keeps separate key phrases for each channels or private query.

You dont need to remember individual key phrases for channels - they're stored in a file MircryptionKeys.txt.

This keyfile is itself encrypted using a master passphrase which you will need to set when you encrypt your first channel. Remember your master keyfile passphrase! If you forget it, your only option will be to delete the master keyfile and re-enter the keys for all of your channels.

You can and should use multiple words and symbols in your keyphrases. Something like "cipher" is a bad keyphrase. A good one would be something like "Letz_S33_a kiddie break 98765 this KeYPHRaZZZZZZZZZZZE $#@%#$$!@!!!"

For normal channels, the channel name associated with a key is #channel, and is case insensitive.  DCC Chats and query windows use the same "channel" names for associating keys, the "channel" name is the name of the other nick, without the pound sign (#).

Use cbc: style cbc keys for your master passphrase and channel keys for additional security.

The only known way to crack blowfish encryption is to "bruteforce" guess keys, i.e. try all key possibilities until you find one that works.

To give you an idea of how long it would take to crack a given key, here is the output of a time-estimation program, run on a pentium 1.6ghz

BruteForcer Time Estimator Utility v1.0

This utility assumes that the checking of a potential key can be done

at the cpu cost of only a few opcodes. This is insanely optimistice

and most decryption routines will take many orders of magnitude longer

than this to evaluate a potential key, so the time esimtates given here

are very optimistic and you should expect to multiply estimates by

10 to 10000 times for even the most efficient key check implementations.

However, you must also account for faster computers, so use the values only

as very rough estimates.  These times assume a truely random password, so

if your password is composed entirely of valid dictionary words, it may be

crackable in a matter of hours.

Please wait - estimating speed.....

- Estimated Bruteforcing Time -----------------

Checks per second: 68380744

8 character pass using only a-z:  0.424 hours.

14 character pass using only a-z:  14957 years.

20 character pass using only a-z:  4620580438920 years.

20 character pass using a-zA-Z0-9: 163329023579390180000 years.

56 character pass using only a-z:  4015476255465169500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years.

56 character pass using a-zA-Z0-9: 5484842835768690700000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years.

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A similar but more informative bruteforce time estimator can be found here: http://www.mandylionlabs.com/PRCCalc/BruteForceCalc.htm, and is included in the Extras directory of MircryptionSuite full install.