A. I wrote the cryptographic apps (Crypto Text, Crypto Speak and Crypto Chat) to allow individuals to communicate freely in private. We now live in a surveillance society where pretty much everything we do is tracked/monitored/recorded, so anything that grabs back even a little bit of freedom for the individual is a *good thing* in my opinion. I got the inspiration for some of the apps from Cryptonomicon and just wrote them out of interest.
These programs are designed for individuals, not for monitoring by the state! There is nothing wrong with an individual PC user wanting to keep an eye on their house/car when they are out, or making sure nobody has been messing around with their PC.
A. I have used the strongest encryption algorithms available, RSA and AES (Rijndael). The programs allow for 4096 bit RSA keys and 256 bit AES keys to be used, which are effectively unbreakable unless some fundamental breakthrough in physics or mathematics is discovered. However, a note of caution is required: it is entirely possible that a resourceful government agency such as Britain's GCHQ or the American NSA has found a mathematical shortcut allowing them to crack RSA or AES, so it would be naive to claim that this software is completely uncrackable. Also, I didn't personally write the RSA or AES code, I got the Delphi implementations for these algorithms from other people, and since I am a software developer not a cryptographer, I can't guarantee that these algorithms (or my use of them) don't contain any bugs. However, at least with my programs all the source code is available which in my view is better than using a closed-source program where you only have the developer's word for it that the program is secure.
A. This argument has gone on for a long time, and Bruce Schneier's essay The Value of Privacy is a good rebuttal of this argument.
A. I've tested it on three separate keyloggers and it defeats all of them; however, I can't guarantee that it will defeat all keyloggers as there are various different techniques for capturing keystrokes and some of these are very low-level such as replacing keyboard drivers, and I doubt my technique would work against these. I did read a survey somewhere saying that the vast majority of keyloggers are "hook-based", and my components should in theory confuse quite a few of these. The best defence against keyloggers is to perform a clean install of Windows on a laptop that you don't let out of your sight, and don't visit any websites on this laptop unless you trust them 100%. I put the anti-keylogging in for the occasions where you are forced to use a PC that could be compromised. Note that using Log This! will be more effective than using the built-in antilogging in CryptoText because it tries to disable keyloggers as well as confuse them. I also found out recently that if you simply run a program as administrator under Windows Vista, this can prevent some keyloggers capturing the keystrokes you type into that program.
A. When Delphi came out in around 1995 it was easily the best tool for writing Windows applications. I (and many other developers) believe this still holds today. Compared with the offerings from Microsoft such as VB or VC++, Delphi outclasses them in just about every department. And it's free for personal use.
A. Various reasons, firstly I write software for interest and enjoyment rather than to make money; the chance of people using my programs is vastly greater if I release them free-of-charge; plus the cryptographic programs are more likely to be trusted if people know the source code is available, even if they aren't programmers themselves.
A. I dislike the way that Windows programs are installed/removed. In the old days, to install a piece of software you simply copied it into a new directory and ran it, then if you wanted to remove it you just deleted the entire directory. I liked this approach, you didn't end up with all kinds of junk cluttering up your Windows\System32 directory, or files & registry entries that get left behind even after you've uninstalled the software. It's my experience that uninstalling rarely works properly and you always end up having to manually clean up stuff that gets left behind, and this is why you have to re-install Windows every year or so to stop it getting horribly sluggish. And whose idea was it that application DLL files should be copied into the operating system directories anyway? So I prefer to stick with the old method - unpack/unzip the software into a new directory and delete it when you don't want it - clean and simple. Not to mention that this will allow you to copy the programs onto a USB drive and use them anywhere, without the hassle of having to install them which can be awkward if you are using a shared PC. None of my software writes settings into the Registry or copies files into the windows\system32 directory so when you delete it you know for sure that it is really gone.
A. It doesn't mean anything, I just wanted a pseudonym and somehow I just came up with it, then did a few web searches to make sure nobody else was using it.
A. I just don't like the idea that somebody could put my name into Google and find out all kinds of personal information about me. It is my opinion that people put far too much personal information up on the web these days, I just can't believe the kind of stuff people put online. Even putting up some opinions on cryptography/surveillance could be enough to disqualify you from a job interview if the HR person disagrees with your writings, so I prefer to remain anonymous.
A. The purpose of this website is to publish the software and documentation I have written. My speciality is writing software, not designing websites (I write all the HTML by hand), and I don't have any motivation to make it look nice - as long as it's basically readable and people can easily find everything. Apologies for the ads - this is because I wanted some free web space to host the software and virtually all the free web space requires the use of ads.
A. Well, technically this is a UK site and software patents cannot be enforced in the UK. However, if you would like to register me as a user of the patent and need all my contact details, you can find them on this page - this contains my full name and address, date-of-birth, social security number and employment details.