Cascading encryption

The Cryptic Disk program (its Ultimate Edition only) supports cascading data encryption with various cryptographic algorithms one by one. The user themselves specifies the list and the order that the algorithms will be applied in upon data encryption. For example, if a user specifies “Blowfish – AES – Twofish” algorithms, the data will first be encrypted with Blowfish, then the result of this encryption will be encrypted with AES, and finally the result of the consecutive encryption with the Blowfish and AES algorithms will be encrypted with Twofish upon data encryption (i.e. when data are written to the encrypted disk). When data are read from the encrypted disk, these algorithms are applied in a reverse order to decrypt data.

The user can specify the maximum number of algorithms (five) when configuring cascading encryption; this will increase the size of the encryption key up to 2944 bits, which will, in its turn, considerably enhance the cryptographic strength of the encrypted information. The more algorithms used upon data encryption, the more CPU capacity data encryption/decryption will require.

Thus, using all the five algorithms upon setting up cascading data encryption is justified only when applied in efficient multi-core processor systems or solely with encrypted small-capacity disks (100-200Mb).