Using Cryptoystem ME6 for Remote Storage of Ciphertext

Cryptosystem ME6 was designed primarily for secure storage of data on the PC where the encryption is performed. But the encrypted data can be stored anywhere, so this leads to the option of remote storage.

Suppose you have sensitive data which you have encrypted and stored on your PC at home or on your laptop. What happens if your house burns down? What happens if your laptop is lost or stolen?

You can avoid the risk of loss of data in this way by transferring your encrypted files to space on a server provided by an internet service provider (ISP). Files can be transferred easily using a file transfer protocol (FTP) program, of which there are several good ones available.

Of course, while your ciphertext files are stored on the ISP's server (or possibly while they are being transferred to or from it) they may be stolen (or rather, copied). This does not matter, because the encrypted data cannot be recovered without knowing the encryption key.

Another reason for putting your encrypted data on a remote server is that then you do not need to store it on any of your PCs, which could be useful in countries where the possession of encrypted data is viewed with suspicion.

There are some services which offer to store encrypted data for you, for a fee. This is the same thing, except that they provide the encryption software for you to use. It's possible that one or more of these services might provide encryption software that has a backdoor in it, so some agency can read any data you encrypt with their software. Better to use encryption software, such as ME6, which is not provided by such a service. Not only does ME6 have no back door, there is also nothing in the ciphertext to indicate that it was created using ME6.

It might be objected: "If my laptop is stolen or my house burns down then also I will lose the Cryptosystem ME6 program itself, so what good is it that I can retrieve my ciphertext?" The answer is that the ME6 demo program can be downloaded from this website and the demo program can be used to decrypt any ME6-encrypted ciphertext (if the encryption key is known). You can test this by decrypting the files provided on the Cryptosystem ME6 in Trial and Demo Modes page.

So encrypting your data with ME6 and FTPing it to some ISP's server can provide additional security for your data.

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