Using BestCrypt Control Panel

When you run the BestCrypt Control Panel, the following window appears:

There are two panels in the main BestCrypt Control Panel window - 'My computer' on the left and the ‘Container List’ on the right. In the 'My computer' panel there is a list of drives that exist on your computer. There may be floppy drives, local and network disks shown in this panel.

First of all, you need to create a Container - the warehouse of your confidential information. You should choose the drive where you want to store the container on the ‘My computer’ panel. Not all drives may be used to store or create the file-containers: some local drives may be read-only devices, e.g. a CD-ROM drive, and some network disks may be mapped for read-only access. These drives cannot be used for creating new container.

Select the disk where you want to create a container in the left panel and press the right button of the mouse. The pop-up menu with one command available - New - will appear. If you run the command, the following window will appear:

You may also use the New command from Container menu or push the button Image text on the toolbar and the same dialog window will appear.

In the FileName field type the name of the file that will store your container, for example, LETTERS.

In the Location field there must be a drive letter and full path for the directory where the file will be created, for example, D: or D:\MyContainer . Also, you can press ... button and browse the directory.

In the Size field, type the size of container. For example, the number 5 Mb in the Size field means that you are going to create a container that will be able to store 5 Megabytes.

Type some phrase that describes the kind of information you are going to store in the Container in the Description field, for example, "My letters". This attribute of the container is not secret and BestCrypt does not hide it, hence, you should enter a string that will remind you about container’s contents but will not help anybody else.

In the Algorithm field you may choose the encryption algorithm that you will use for encrypting your data - Blowfish, GOST, Rijndael or Twofish or other.

In the Mode field you may choose the encryption mode - LRW (Tweakable narrow block) or CBC (Cipher Block Chaining ) - for containers with KG-Ghost key generator.

In the Key generator field you can choose BestCrypt module that will be used to transform your password to pseudo-random binary encryption key. BestCrypt supports container files created with SHA-1, SHA-256 and KG-Ghost Key Generators. SHA-1 and SHA-256 Key Generators appeared in previous version of BestCrypt, so please use one of them if you want to get your new container compatible with earlier version 7 of the software. KG-Ghost Key Generator has been developed for version 8 of BestCrypt, it supports several secure hash algorithms: SHA-1, SHA-256, MD5 and RIPEMD 160. Besides, KG-Ghost has several advanced features.

NOTE: BestCrypt allows easy extension of the software with other encryption or key generation procedures. It is possible for third-party developers to design, for example, a key generation algorithm for transforming fingerprints to encryption keys - and users of this BestCrypt extension will be able to get access to their encrypted containers using their fingerprints instead of passwords.

BestCrypt allows users to format the container for all file systems supported by Windows 9*/ME/NT/2000/XP/XPx64/Vista. Before you use the BestCrypt container for the first time, you need to mount the container on the BestCrypt logical disk and format the disk. If you wish to do this just after creation of the container, you should mark the Mount and format now checkbox - in this case BestCrypt will mount the container on the logical drive letter, chosen in the Mount drive list box. Then standard Windows formatting utility will be run and you will be allowed to choose the file system for your container (FAT or NTFS).

Now, if you have filled in all fields, press the Create button. The dialog for entering the password will appear:

NOTE: If you chose KG-Ghost key generator for your container, you can use the Advanced button to change hash algorithm or to create container using Secret Sharing Scheme or Public Key Encryption.

After you have entered the password twice, BestCrypt will verify that there were no mistakes during the typing. Then BestCrypt will create the file "Letters.jbc", and the string with the container description, file name, size, and algorithm will appear in the Containers List panel of the BestCrypt main window.

BestCrypt has no limitation on the number of containers that may be created. After the containers are created, select one of them in the Containers List panel.

You can mount or dismount the container “LETTERS.jbc” whenever you wish. To mount the selected container on drive X: you should do the following. Choose the command Mount in the pop-up menu that appears if you press the right mouse button on the string with container description. Other options are (1) to use the Mount command from Container menu, and (2) to push the button Image text on the toolbar. The following window will appear.

You may choose any drive letter for the BestCrypt virtual drive. Type the password for the container in the Password field. Then press OK button and the encrypted data on the container will be available for access through the virtual drive X. After you have created the container and mounted it on the virtual drive X, the BestCrypt Control Panel will look like the following picture:

Now you may quit the program. Your secret virtual drive X: now is accessible just like a normal disk drive. Everything you write to the disk will be automatically encrypted and then decrypted when you read the data from the disk.

To dismount the virtual drive, run BestCrypt Control Panel and choose the Dismount command from the pop-up menu, or press Image text button on the toolbar or button to close all virtual drives. You can also use BestCrypt icon in the system tray area to mount/dismount drives or to open BestCrypt Control Panel.

NOTE: BestCrypt Control Panel shows information about containers in the Containers List panel specific to every user who may log on to your computer. For example, users John and Alice enter different user names when they log on. If John creates container ‘My container.jbc’ in some sub-directory, for example, in C:\JOHN directory, BestCrypt Control Panel will not show the container if Alice logs on. If Alice knows password for the container and also wishes to mount it, she has to insert it to “her” BestCrypt Control Panel explicitly. This can be done by running the Add link command from the Group menu.