Picocrypt is a very small (hence <i>Pico</i>), very simple, yet very secure encryption tool that you can use to protect your files. It's designed to be the <i>go-to</i> tool for encryption, with a focus on security, simplicity, and reliability. Picocrypt uses the secure XChaCha20 cipher and the Argon2id key derivation function to provide a high level of security, even from three-letter agencies like the NSA. It's designed for maximal security, making absolutely no compromises security-wise, and is built with Go's standard x/crypto modules. <strong>Your privacy and security are under attack. Take it back with confidence by protecting your files with Picocrypt.</strong>
Please donate to Picocrypt on <ahref="https://opencollective.com/picocrypt">Open Collective</a> (crypto is accepted) to raise money for a security audit from Cure53. Because this is a project that I spend many hours on and make no money from, I cannot pay for an audit myself. <i>Picocrypt needs support from its community.</i>
**Important**: There are multiple entities under the name "Picocrypt". For example, there's an old encryption tool called PicoCrypt that uses a broken cipher. There's also an ERC-funded research project called PICOCRYPT. There are even domains related to Picocrypt that I've never registered. Please don't confuse any of these unrelated projects with Picocrypt (this project). Make sure to only download Picocrypt from this repository to ensure that you get the authentic and backdoor-free Picocrypt. When sharing Picocrypt with others, be sure to link to this repository to prevent any confusion.
Picocrypt for Windows is as simple as it gets. To download the latest, standalone, and portable executable for Windows, click <ahref="https://github.com/HACKERALERT/Picocrypt/releases/download/1.29/Picocrypt.exe">here</a>. If Windows Defender or your antivirus flags Picocrypt as a virus, please do your part and submit it as a false positive for the betterment of everyone.
If the executable above doesn't work, it likely means that your system doesn't support OpenGL. For this situation, I've provided an alternate implementation that will run on any Windows system, which you may download <ahref="https://github.com/HACKERALERT/Picocrypt/releases/download/1.29/Picocrypt-NoGL.exe">here</a>.
Picocrypt for macOS is very simple as well. Download Picocrypt <ahref="https://github.com/HACKERALERT/Picocrypt/releases/download/1.29/Picocrypt.app.zip">here</a>, extract the zip file, and run Picocrypt which is inside. If you can't open Picocrypt because it's not from a verified developer, control-click on Picocrypt and hit "Open" to bypass the warning.
One thing to keep in mind is that Picocrypt on macOS requires Rosetta 2 and OpenGL, both of which are likely to be removed by Apple in the future. This means that Picocrypt may no longer run on macOS in the future as Apple pushes their proprietary graphics and silicon. The solution? Don't buy Apple. They don't care about developers.
There are multiple ways to use Picocrypt on Linux. The recommended way is to install Picocrypt from a .deb <ahref="https://github.com/HACKERALERT/Picocrypt/releases/download/1.29/Picocrypt.deb">here</a> (Debian 11+ and Ubuntu 20+). If the .deb doesn't suit your needs or you don't use a Debian-based distro, feel free to use the AppImage from <ahref="https://github.com/HACKERALERT/Picocrypt/releases/download/1.29/Picocrypt.AppImage">here</a>. If neither of the options above work, you may install Picocrypt from Snapcraft, which should work on all distros. Find the instructions for Snapcraft <ahref="https://snapcraft.io/picocrypt">here</a>.
The Paranoid Pack is a compressed archive that contains executables for every version of Picocrypt ever released for Windows, macOS, and Linux. As long as you have it stored in a place you can access, you'll be able to open it and use any version of Picocrypt in case this repository mysteriously vanishes or the entire Internet burns down. Think of it as a seed vault for Picocrypt. As long as one person has the Paranoid Pack within reach, they can share it with the rest of the world and keep Picocrypt functional in cases of catastrophic events like GitHub shutting down suddenly or the NSA capturing me (just in case, you know?). The best way to ensure Picocrypt is accessible many decades from now is to keep a Paranoid Pack in a safe place. So if you are worried about being unable to access Picocrypt in the future, well, here's your solution. Just head to the Releases tab and get yourself a copy.
<li>Unlike NordLocker, BitLocker, AxCrypt, and most cloud storage providers, Picocrypt and its dependencies are completely open-source and auditable. You can verify for yourself that there aren't any backdoors or flaws.</li>
<li>Picocrypt is <i>tiny</i>. While NordLocker is over 50 MiB and VeraCrypt is over 20 MiB, Picocrypt sits at just 2 MiB, about the size of a medium-resolution photo. And that's not all - Picocrypt is portable (doesn't need to be installed) and doesn't require administrator/root privileges.</li>
<li>Picocrypt is easier and more productive to use than VeraCrypt. To encrypt files with VeraCrypt, you'd have to spend at least five minutes setting up a volume. With Picocrypt's simple UI, all you have to do is drag and drop your files, enter a password, and hit Encrypt. All the complex procedures are handled by Picocrypt internally. Who said secure encryption can't be simple?</li>
<li>Picocrypt is designed for security. 7-Zip is an archive utility and not an encryption tool, so its focus is not on security. Picocrypt, however, is built with security as the number one priority. Every part of Picocrypt exists for a reason and anything that could impact the security of Picocrypt is removed. Picocrypt is built with cryptography you can trust.</li>
<li>Picocrypt authenticates data in addition to protecting it, preventing hackers from maliciously modifying sensitive data. This is useful when you are sending encrypted files over an insecure channel and want to be sure that it arrives untouched.</li>
<li>Picocrypt actively protects header data from corruption by adding extra Reed-Solomon parity bytes, so if part of a volume's header (which contains important cryptographic components) corrupts (e.g., hard drive bit rot), Picocrypt can still recover the header and decrypt your data with a high success rate. Picocrypt can also encode the entire volume with Reed-Solomon to prevent any corruption to your important files.</li>
Picocrypt is a very simple tool, and most users will intuitively understand how to use it in a few seconds. On a basic level, simply dropping your files, entering a password, and hitting Encrypt is all that's needed to encrypt your files. Dropping the output back into Picocrypt, entering the password, and hitting Decrypt is all that's needed to decrypt those files. Pretty simple, right?
While being simple, Picocrypt also strives to be powerful in the hands of knowledgeable and advanced users. Thus, there are some additional options that you may use to suit your needs.
<li><strong>Password generator</strong>: Picocrypt provides a secure password generator that you can use to create cryptographically secure passwords. You can customize the password length, as well as the types of characters to include.</li>
<li><strong>Comments</strong>: Use this to store notes, information, and text along with the file (it won't be encrypted). For example, you can put a description of the file you're encrypting before sending it to someone. When the person you sent it to drops the file into Picocrypt, your description will be shown to that person.</li>
<li><strong>Keyfiles</strong>: Picocrypt supports the use of keyfiles as an additional form of authentication (or the only form of authentication). Not only can you use multiple keyfiles, but you can also require the correct order of keyfiles to be present for a successful decryption to occur. A particularly good use case of multiple keyfiles is creating a shared volume, where each person holds a keyfile, and all of them (and their keyfiles) must be present to decrypt the shared volume. By checking the "Require correct order" box and dropping your keyfile in last, you can also ensure that you'll always be the one clicking the Decrypt button.</li>
<li><strong>Paranoid mode</strong>: Using this mode will encrypt your data with both XChaCha20 and Serpent in a cascade fashion, and use HMAC-SHA3 to authenticate data instead of BLAKE2b. This is recommended for protecting top-secret files and provides the highest level of practical security attainable. For a hacker to crack your encrypted data, both the XChaCha20 cipher and the Serpent cipher must be broken, assuming you've chosen a good password. It's safe to say that in this mode, your files are impossible to crack.</li>
<li><strong>Reed-Solomon</strong>: This feature is very useful if you are planning to archive important data on a cloud provider or external medium for a long time. If checked, Picocrypt will use the Reed-Solomon error correction code to add 8 extra bytes for every 128 bytes of data to prevent file corruption. This means that up to ~3% of your file can corrupt and Picocrypt will still be able to correct the errors and decrypt your files with no corruption. Of course, if your file corrupts very badly (e.g., you dropped your hard drive), Picocrypt won't be able to fully recover your files, but it will try its best to recover what it can. Note that this option may slow down encryption and decryption speeds.</li>
<li><strong>Force decrypt</strong>: Picocrypt automatically checks for file integrity upon decryption. If the file has been modified or is corrupted, Picocrypt will automatically delete the output for the user's safety. If you would like to override these safeguards, check this option. Also, if this option is checked and the Reed-Solomon feature was used on the encrypted volume, Picocrypt will attempt to recover as much of the file as possible during decryption.</li>
<li><strong>Split into chunks</strong>: Don't feel like dealing with gargantuan files? No worries! With Picocrypt, you can choose to split your output file into custom-sized chunks, so large files can become more manageable and easier to upload to cloud providers. Simply choose a unit (KiB, MiB, GiB, or TiB) and enter your desired chunk size for that unit. To decrypt the chunks, simply drag one of them into Picocrypt and the chunks will be automatically recombined during decryption.</li>
<li><strong>Compress files</strong>: By default, Picocrypt uses a zip file with no compression to quickly merge files together when encrypting multiple files. If you would like to compress these files, however, simply check this box and the standard Deflate compression algorithm will be applied during encryption.</li>
For more information on how Picocrypt handles cryptography, see <ahref="Internals.md">Internals</a> for the technical details. If you're worried about the safety of me or this project, let me assure you that this repository won't be hijacked or backdoored. I have 2FA (TOTP) enabled on all accounts with a tie to Picocrypt (GitHub, Google, Reddit, Ubuntu One/Snapcraft, Discord, etc.), in addition to full-disk encryption on all of my portable devices. For further hardening, Picocrypt uses my isolated forks of dependencies and I fetch upstream only when I have taken a look at the changes and believe that there aren't any security issues. This means that if a dependency gets hacked or deleted by the author, Picocrypt will be using my fork of it and remain completely unaffected. You can feel confident about using Picocrypt.
Consider joining <ahref="https://www.reddit.com/r/Picocrypt/">r/Picocrypt</a>. While I won't be active in this subreddit myself, it's still a great place to ask questions and help one another out, especially if something happens to me or this repository in the future. Remember to only trust this specific subreddit and be aware of hackers that might try to impersonate me on other platforms. I will never ask you for your password, and anyone who does is not me. I will never tell you to download a file from a suspicious link, and anyone who does is not me.
When I was actively developing Picocrypt, I accepted donations, but now that Picocrypt is complete and production-ready, there's no need anymore. Instead, take your time and effort to share the love of Picocrypt with others. Donations are nice, but being able to help others is a lot more valuable to me than a few spare dollars. Knowing that Picocrypt is helping people secure their files is plenty enough for me.
No, Picocrypt is considered feature-complete and won't be getting any new features. Unlike other tools which try to constantly add new features (which introduces new bugs and security holes), Picocrypt focuses on just a few core features but does each of them exceptionally well. Remember Picocrypt's ideology: small, simple, and secure.
No, I don't plan on supporting Android or iOS because they are very different from traditional desktop operating systems and require different toolchains to develop apps for. Due to the nature of open-source software, however, a community-built version of Picocrypt for Android or iOS may appear in the future.
People seem to have the notion that software must be constantly updated to stay relevant and secure. While this may be true for a lot of the software we use today, it is not for Picocrypt. Picocrypt is "good software" and good software doesn't need constant updates to remain relevant and secure. Good software will always be good software.
