re: thread222-1271566

[gardentech]

I did a search for encrypted data and came across your threads on MD5 encryption -- none of which I understood!! STRONGM had come up with some great solutions which were "greek" to me but I wondered if it could help me with my situation..... I actually have already posted it on thread528-1275137.

Although I didn't understand your thread I did see that someone mentioned something about decryption of data.
What I have is data that was unknowingly encrypted and backed up to our home network server before we did a hard format of my C drive. The data files were originally on the D drive when I backed it up. When we restored the backup to the D drive it overwrote the existing data. After the restore we realized that everything was encrypted and of course my user account and all the encryption keys and passwords were gone. I was able to recover the original data on the D drive but all of it was encrypted (we do not know how it happened because I never went into a file and encrypted it). Would your programs decrypt my data?

Thanks in advance for any response!

Pam

 

[strongm]

Whilst not really a VB question, I thought I'd respond.

Sadly, none of the encyption/decryption stuff we have talked about in this forum is really applicable to resolving your problem.

I also don't want you to get your hopes up with the data recovery specialists. XP Pro uses AES encryption with a 256-bit key for the Encrypting File System. This is what the US government use to encrypt documents classified TOP SECRET, which should give an idea of how secure it is thought to be (also, whilst AES has been successfully brute-forced that was against a 64-bit key and took 5 years)

And ignore TheMisio's somewhat ludicrous idea in your other thread - that only works when you've still got your key and certificate

 

[gardentech]

strongm,

Thanks so much for your reply. I wish it had been better news. I keep hoping that I've missed something in finding a solution --- there was some valuable information in my data that I can never recreate.

I used an EFS Key recovery that brought up a long list of keys that were encrypted but of course we had no recovery agent key that I keep reading about.

So, what you're saying is what the Microsoft engineer said: "Ive put my data in a safety deposit box, welded it shut, threw away the key, and forgot what building it's in"

Aren't the encryption keys backed up in the backup? No way to break into that? Uh....just grasping at straws!

Thanks again for your help.

pam