OSE, A Graphical Frontend to OpenSSL's symmetric encryption
Version 1.11, 08 July 2022

OSE will encrypt files and text using any one of a number of ciphers and modes
provided by OpenSSL, and its use is quite self explanatory.

OSE is completely self contained and portable, making it ideal for USB flash
drives and Tails persistent storage. It will create one file in the working
directory, ".ose_cipher", which simply keeps track of the last used cipher. It
is not necessary, just there for convenience, and if it's removed or not there,
OSE will simply create another one defaulting to aes-128-ecb.

Of course, OpenSSL must be present for OSE to work, and additionally, it makes
calls to the system utility "echo" when encrypting text, so:

Linux - OpenSSL and echo are already part of every distribution

Windows - OpenSSL is probably not installed on your system, and the Windows
"echo" call is inadequate for use by OSE. OSE, when launched, will spawn both
openssl.exe and echo.exe in the working directory. (echo.exe is a Windows port
of the UNIX/Linux echo) OSE will clean up these files upon terminating.

Notes on long text strings:
While you can encrypt a lot of text with the "echo" pipe, it's not unlimited.
If you run into the case where OSE informs of a too long text string, an 
option is included to encrypt text using the TCL AES package using a 256 bit
keystream and cbc mode. The password hashing and salting using this mode are
extremely robust; you lose no security. Using this mode, the length of the
plain text to encrypt is limited only by your computers' memory. Additionally,
the plain text is compressed before encryption, reducing the size of the result
ciphertext.

Have fun

Dana Booth
danabooth@mail.com



Changelog:

1.11 - First public offering, simply cleaned up code

1.1 - Catch fatal errors in message boxes rather than just letting them run
their course

1.0 - Added option to encrypt text using internal aes package, basically a copy
and paste from another app I made recently that does not use OpenSSL

0.01a thru 0.99 - Toying with the idea of offering a "cleaned up" utility as a
successor to oslcrypt, an app I made a while back when I became hooked on
encryption and security.
