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* * * * * *
* *************** * *************** *
* * * * * *
* *
* THE CONFIDANT (tm) *
* TUTORIAL *
* *
* * * * * *
* *************** * *************** *
* * * * * *




















Copyright (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage
Yale Station 2902
New Haven, CT 06520
















CONTENTS

The Confidant and the Secret Formula ........... T-1
What is There to Protect? ..................... T-1
Encryption Vs. Passwords ...................... T-2
What is Encryption? ........................... T-3
A Little Background ........................... T-3
Copying the Master Diskette ................... T-4
Using The Confidant ........................... T-7
Getting HELP .................................. T-7
The SOURCE .................................... T-9
The DESTINATION ............................... T-9
Choosing a PASSWORD ........................... T-10
Hiding the PASSWORD ........................... T-11
Starting Encryption ........................... T-11
Fixing Mistakes ............................... T-14
"Flipping" SOURCE and DESTINATION ............. T-15
Copying ....................................... T-15
Privacy ....................................... T-18
Directory and Erase SOURCE ...................... T-19
Using The Confidant to Transmit Data Over the
Telephone .................................. T-19
Index to the Tutorial .......................... T-25








































THE CONFIDANT AND THE SECRET FORMULA

A Tutorial on How to Use

The Confidant


Anne Lambert pressed the intercom button on her

desk.

As Vice President of Finance for the small Icey

Beverage Company, she faced more than the usual number

of problems. The one that worried her now was the

security of the data on her firm's new microcomputers.

It was hardly a major problem, but she sensed that it

had the potential for becoming one. And she knew

better than to let it.

"See if you can get David Lyons, the computer

consultant, will you?" she said to her secretary over

the intercom.

What is There to Protect?

While she waited for the call to go through, Anne

considered what she wanted to protect and why.

First, there were the payroll records. A curious

employee might look at the records of others. If he

spread word of what he found, the morale of other

employees could suffer.

Next, there were management reports, and

projections produced by her office. If someone got

hold of a prerelease copy of the firm's quarterly

report, for instance, they could use that information

to manipulate sales of the company's stock.

And there were Icey's plans for a new soft drink

marketing strategy. How valuable those would be to a

competitor! And how easy to convince an employee to

print off a copy from the computer after hours, or for

someone to intercept a copy when it was being

transmitted over the telephone to the Midwest office.

She wasn't the only one concerned, either.

Earlier today, Frank Vitale, the company's Director of

Personnel, had mentioned he would like to keep a

computerized record of the experimental alcoholism

treatment program his office was offering to a small

number of employees. But one of the enrollees had

balked when he brought it up. "I don't want anyone

else knowing I'm in the program," he told Frank. "If

you put my name in the computer, someone will find out

for sure."













During the same discussion, Aaron Abrams, the

marketing manager, mentioned a mailing list he was

preparing as part of a compaign to increase the number

of dealers selling the company's products. "I'd sure

hate it if our competition got hold of this," he said.

"They'd mess us up for sure." He was worried because a

similar list was stolen at the company he worked for

previously.

Getting access to the microcomputers was very

easy. Since the computers were located in different

offices in the building, physical security was low.

And some of the computers were connected by a local

area network, so that a user of one computer could look

at data on another computer without the user of the

other computer even knowing.

Encryption Vs. Passwords

Anne's thoughts were cut short by the buzz of the

intercom. "Mr. Lyons is on the line," said her

secretary.

"David," she said, when she picked up the

telephone, "a salesman was here last week, trying to

get us to buy a security system for our microcomputers.

I'm afraid I wasn't too impressed with what he was

offering, but the matter has been preying on my mind

ever since." She briefly outlined the concerns she had

just gone over in her head.

"What didn't you like about what the salesman was

offering you?" asked David, when she was finished.

"He was selling a password protection system, you

know, where every user has a password that he uses to

get onto the system. But we already have that kind of

protection with the local area network, and I thought

you said it was not very secure."

"That's right," answered the consultant. "The

passwords are kept in a file on the disk. A clever

employee or other user could find the password file

with a little work, and could then use any account he

wished. Passwords are useful. But they are seldom

totally secure."

"Maybe these computers aren't as useful as I

thought they were going to be," said Anne. "An awfully

lot of the information we want to use them for is
sensitive."

"I think I have a solution to the problem,"
answered David. "I suggest that you encrypt the data."



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-2]









What Is Encryption?

"Encrypt it? Isn't that what CIA agents and spies

do -- change text into a secret code or something?

"Yes, the same techniques can be used to protect

confidential data on a computer," David explained.

"All data in a computer are stored in special codes

made up of numbers. The usual code for microcomputers

is called ASCII, which stands for American Standard
Code for Information Interchange. ASCII is a code that

most programmers and computer designers and

manufacturers know. When you encrypt data, you change

the code. That way, no one knows it. The change in

code is based on a password that is combined

mathematically with the ASCII code to produce a new

code."

"That sounds complicated," replied Anne. "I need

something simple to use or no one will do it."

"It's actually quite straightforward," David

assured her. "The computer does all the work, and

it does it relatively fast. The only thing you do is

supply the password."

"Well, I am interested in knowing more," said

Anne. "Will you be able to show me?"

"Let's see," David said, scanning his appointment

book. "I could come Friday morning, about nine a.m.

It will take us about an hour."

"Fine," agreed Anne. "I'll see you then." As she

hung up the phone, she said aloud to herself,

"Encryption. That certainly sounds intriguing."

* * *

A Little Background

On Friday morning Anne Lambert met David Lyons

promptly at nine a.m. in her office. Each inquired

politely how the other was doing and then they got down

to business.

"I had my secretary pick up a couple of books and

articles on encryption at the university library," said

Anne, "and I've been reading something about it. I'm

afraid I don't understand it all, but it has a

fascinating history."

David sifted through the pile of literature on her

desk. There were titles like:



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-3]









Codes, Ciphers, and Computers, by Bruce Bosworth,

Hayden Publishing Co., 1982

"Privacy and Authentication: An Introduction to

Cryptography," by Whitfield Diffie and Martin E.

Hellman, from the Proceedings of the IEEE, 1979.

The Codebreakers by David Kahn, Macmillan Co., 1967.

Most were classics in the field of cryptology, or

modern articles about it. The last one was a good non-

technical introduction, but it was too old to cover

computer cryptography very well.

"For the most part, those are pretty technical,"

said David, who was thinking Anne's secretary had the

rare aptitude of a good reference librarian. "It's no

wonder they were difficult to follow. What did you

learn?"

"Well, that people have been using secret codes at

least since the Egyptian pharoahs. Also, that some

codes are easier to break than others. There are two

coding systems that are used a lot today, the Data

Encryption Standard and Public Key Encryption. They

are considered fairly safe. There are also other good

systems. Finally, I learned that encryption is not

just for espionage. Government and business use it to

protect privacy, and to ensure the security of

financial and other operations."

"All quite accurate," agreed David. "What do you

think about trying it out?"

"I'm willing," replied Anne. "At least I'd like

to see it work."

"I have a program here called The Confidant," said

David, pulling a diskette and manual from his

briefcase. "You can use it to encrypt your files, and

then use it to decrypt them back to their original

form."



Copying the Master Diskette

"The first thing we'll do," continued David, "is

make a copy of the master diskette, for everyday use.

That way, if something happens to the copy, we can

always make another one. If we don't make a copy, but

use the master, any damage to the master puts us out of

commission. And damage can happen pretty easily, as

someone who uses computers very much soon finds out."



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-4]









"I think I've heard that before. What causes

damage to diskettes?" asked Anne.

"Getting dust or finger prints on the diskette,

bending it, or setting a heavy object on top of it.

Sometimes when you walk across a carpet, static

electricity will zap it. Cigarette smoke getting on

the diskette is another danger. There are lots of ways

to destroy one."

"I know how to make a copy," said Anne. "First,

you take your DOS diskette and place it in drive A."

She opened the door of the drive and inserted the

diskette that contained the computer's operating system

software. "Then I place a new diskette in drive B."

David handed her a brand new diskette from a box

on her desk. She slid it into the right-hand drive,

then closed both drive doors. She typed

FORMAT B:/S

and watched while the computer formatted the new

diskette and wrote a copy of the system software on it.

At last the message

Format Another (Y/N)?

appeared on the screen. She pressed to indicate

she was finished. She took the DOS diskette out of

drive A, and placed it in its sheath.

"Now I need the master diskette for The

Confidant," she said, taking it from David. She

inserted it in the A drive and closed the door. She

typed:

COPY A:*.* B:

The screen showed the message

confide.exe
confide.hlp
confide.cry
confide.inv
refcard.doc
tutorial.doc
descript.doc
refer.doc
type.me
9 file(s) copied

When the copying process finished she removed both

diskettes and put them in their envelopes.



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-5]









Meanwhile David had written a label saying:

The Confidant (tm)
Copyright 1983, 1984 by Data Sage
Copy

which he gave to Anne. She affixed it to the diskette

and also placed a silver write-protect tab over the

write-protect notch of the diskette.

"There," she smiled, placing the copy in the A

drive. "Now I'm curious to see how it works."


------------------------------------------------------------
DOING IT

Take time to make a copy of The Confidant on a

formatted diskette, if you haven't already done so. Be sure

to place the original copy in a safe place.

------------------------------------------------------------


































[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-6]











Using The Confidant

"Type CONFIDE and press the key,"

prompted David.

In response to Anne Lambert's command the screen

of the computer cleared and a "shareware" notice

appeared. As she read the notice, David commented,

"The company that wrote The Confidant distributes it

freely and asks anyone who uses it to contribute ten

dollars towards its support."

"That certainly sounds fair," said Anne. "I'll

see to it that we send the money right away." She

pressed the space bar and a form appeared.


David pointed to the screen. "The boxes on the

right are for telling the computer what you want to

encrypt or decrypt -- 'crypt' for short -- as well as

what you want to do with the text once it has been

processed. There is also a box for your PASSWORD,

which you make up. As I mentioned before, the computer

combines the password with your text to create a secret

code."

"What are these numbers at the bottom of the

screen?" asked Anne. "I suppose they refer to the

function keys on the keyboard." David nodded.



Getting HELP

Anne smiled a little self-consciously. "If at

first you don't know what to do, read the

instructions," she said. "It looks like pressing the

key will give me some help."

She pressed the key. Another form appeared on

the screen. This time, it was a list of topics for

which help was available. One by one, Anne pressed the

function keys that gave access to the topics, so that

after about five minutes she had read them all.

"That's a lot of stuff to keep in my head after

just one reading," she said. "But let's see if I

understand what I should do next."

She pressed the key that took her back to

the main form. The box meant for information about the

SOURCE of the text was highlighted, and the cursor

rested in the box. "I guess I tell it where the text



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-7]








is I want to encrypt," she said after studying the

screen for a moment.



------------------------------------------------------------
DOING IT

Load The Confidant into your computer and start it up

by typing CONFIDE . Then read through the HELP

files by pressing the key.

------------------------------------------------------------












































[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-8]









The SOURCE

"Yes. The first thing you must decide," said

David, "is what text you are going to process. The

Confidant can encrypt text, decrypt it, and even just

copy it from one file to another without making any

changes in it. You must tell it where to get the text

from and where you want it to go to. The SOURCE box is

the from part."

"I can either type the text in from the keyboard,

meaning the 'CONSOLE' as it says here, or else use text

that already exists in a file," said Anne.

"Exactly," said David. "Why don't you start by

entering from the keyboard. That will give you a

better 'feel' for the way the program works. Since the

program selects the CONSOLE by default, you just have

to press the key to move to the DESTINATION

field."


The DESTINATION

When Anne pressed the key, the SOURCE box turned

dark and the DESTINATION box lit up. "I assume the

same idea holds for the DESTINATION," said Anne.

"Yes," said David. "Except that you have more

options. You can send the text to a parallel or serial

printer as well as to a file or the console."

"It doesn't make sense to print encrypted text on

the printer," said Anne. "Who is going to read it?"

"Exactly," replied David. "The printer is usually

chosen as DESTINATION only when you are decrypting

text."

"I'd like to try the program out a little," said

Anne. "If I let the DESTINATION be the CONSOLE too,

will I be able to see what I am encrypting?"

"Yes," replied David. "Ordinarily, you would want

to save encrypted text in a disk file so you can get it

back again later. Most often you use the console as

the destination when you want to look at decrypted text

on the screen. But while you're getting used to The

Confidant it would be a good idea to see what encrypted

text looks like. An easy way to do that is by choosing

the CONSOLE as the DESTINATION."

Anne pressed the key, and the computer

highlighted the PASSWORD box. "You said the password



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-9]








is what makes the data secure," said Anne. "But you

also said that password protection systems are usually

not secure, at least on microcomputers. I'm a little

confused."

"What we normally mean when we say 'password

security system' is that a user must enter a password

before he or she can use the computer, or a certain

file on the computer. The data in the file are not

changed. The problem is, a list of passwords must be

kept by the computer, and very often that list is open

to inspection by skilled programmers. Even if someone

can't read the password list he can often get around

the software that is responsible for security. But

encryption changes the data in the file, so that even

if someone can look at the file he won't understand

what is in it."


Choosing a PASSWORD

"How do I decide what password to use?" asked

Anne.

"You have to make it up," said David. "But some

passwords are better than others."

Anne nodded for him to continue.

"Certain passwords are obvious to someone who

knows you very well. They include names and birthdates

of family members or close friends, personal

characteristics or hobbies for which you are known, and

license plate or social security numbers. A smart

person will try those first if he wants to decrypt your

text."

"I probably shouldn't use 'rootbeer' or 'soda

pop' then," said Anne, showing she understood.

"On the other hand," said David, "the password

must be something you will remember. Or else you must

write it down and keep it in a secure place. If you

forget your password, you are in the same situation as

anyone else who wants to decrypt your text -- out of

luck. By the way, the password doesn't have to be a

word; it can be a phrase, or nonsense, or a random

number. But you should try to make it as close to

sixteen characters long as you can, because longer

passwords are more secure."

Anne pondered a minute. Then she typed in the

words:

A PENNY SAVED



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-10]








"Does it matter whether it is capital or lower

case letters?" she asked. David shook his head no.

"What if I enter more than sixteen characters into

the PASSWORD box?" Anne persisted.

"Then the first fifteen characters of your

password will be the first fifteen characters you

entered, and the last character of your password will

be the last character you entered," answered David.

Hiding the PASSWORD

"Now here is a useful trick," he added. "See the

bottom of the screen, where it says:

F6 Hide

Press the key and watch what happens."

As Anne pressed the key, the SOURCE, DESTINATION,

and PASSWORD fields suddenly went blank.

"That key hides the password and file information,

so if someone else is looking over your shoulder they

cannot discover your password or the files you are

using. You can even press the Hide key before you

enter your password or the file names. Then the

characters you type won't appear on the screen, so that

no one can see them as you enter them."

Anne pressed the key again, and the

information reappeared in the boxes.


Starting Encryption

"Now, how do I get it to actually encrypt

something?" Anne asked. "I gather from the list of

function keys at the bottom of the screen that I just

press the key."

"That's right," David acknowledged.

Anne pressed the key. The form she had just

filled out disappeared and a new one was displayed on

the screen. It had two large rectangular boxes

stretching across the screen. The top box was labeled

"Source" and the bottom one "Destination."

"Now, just start typing something," said David.

Anne typed:

Benjamin Franklin became frugal after his brother



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-11]









The text appeared in the box labeled "Source."

After the word "brother" she pressed the key.

In the "Destination" box little chunks of nonsense text

started to appear. "My goodness, so that is what

encrypted text looks like," she exclaimed.

When the encrypted text stopped appearing she

typed in the second line:

made fun of him for spending money on a tin whistle.

Again, when she pressed , the encrypted

text appeared in the "Destination" box.

"I think I understand," Anne said. "I type my

text in English. The computer transforms it into

apparent nonsense and then prints it back out for me to

read."

"That's right," said David.

"What does it mean at the bottom of the screen

when it says 'Block being processed: 14 of ???'?"

"The computer encodes the data in chunks that are

eight characters long," explained David. "Each chunk

is called a block. The Confidant tells you how many

blocks it has processed so you will be aware at all

times of the status of the encryption."

"To stop, I just press the key, is that

right?" said Anne. She touched the key and a message

appeared at the bottom of the screen:

The Confidant finished...Press any key to return to

Main Menu.

Anne pressed the space bar, and the familiar form

where she entered her password returned.

















[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-12]








------------------------------------------------------------
DOING IT

Make up some text of your own and type it into The

Confidant so you can see how The Confidant works. Start by

making up a password -- Anne Lambert's password, A PENNY

SAVED, is useful if another one doesn't come to mind. Then

press and type your text into the "Source" box.

At the end of each line, remember to press the

key and wait until the line is processed before you resume

typing. If you want a sample of text to try out, here is

one about passwords, or "keys," from "Guidelines for

Implementing and Using the NBS Data Encryption Standard,"

Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 74,

available from the U.S. Government Printing Office.


KEY MANAGEMENT

Management of the cryptographic keys used to protect

data is of utmost importance to the security of the data...
A new key should be generated and used when any

event occurs that may have compromised the existing key. A

new key should also be generated and used periodically in

the event that an undetected compromise has occurred...
Unencrypted keys must always be physically protected

to prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining knowledge

of their values...

------------------------------------------------------------


























[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-13]











Fixing Mistakes

"The next thing is to try a file as the

DESTINATION," recommended David. "Move to the

DESTINATION box by pressing the key twice."


Anne did so. "Now I just type the name of my file

over the top of the word CONSOLE," she said.

"Right," agreed David. "As you recall, a file
description has three parts: the drive, the file name,

and the file extension."

"Yes," said Anne. "The drive is a single letter

followed by a colon. The file name is one to eight

characters. The extension is a period followed by one

to three characters. Only I don't have to use an

extension if I don't want to. And I only have to type

the drive name if I want to use a drive that is not the

'default' drive."

She typed in:

B:FIZLE.TXT

"Oh," she smiled. "That should be FIZZLE. Now

you can see why I would never make it as a secretary.

I can't type."

"A perfect opportunity to point out the use of

some other keys on the keyboard," responded David. "I

suggest you move your cursor beneath the Z in FIZLE and

then press the key on the keyboard. It will

switch you into "insert mode" so you can insert

characters into the text. All you need to do is type

in a second 'Z'."

"It works," said Anne as she did it. "Also, I

noticed that the cursor changed size when I pressed the

key."

"To let you know you are in insert mode. Press

again to switch back into regular mode."

She did. "What other keys have special functions?"

she asked.

"All the keys do what the labels on them say they

do," said David. "The key deletes the character

at the cursor position, the key takes you to the

start of your text or your form, and so forth."



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-14]









"Now that I have the right file name, I can try

encryption again," said Anne. "I'll use the same

password as before."

She pressed the key and the screen changed.

This time there was only one rectangular box, the one

marked "Source." Anne typed in:

Franklin won his way into American hearts
with his aphorisms in Poor Richard's Almanac.

When she pressed at the end of each line,

no text appeared at the bottom of the screen. But she

knew the program was working because it displayed the

block number it was processing. When the numbers

stopped incrementing, she pressed the key to end.

Then she pressed it again to return to the main menu.

"How do I know it encrypted my text?" Anne asked.

"Can I see it?"


"Flipping" SOURCE and DESTINATION

"Certainly," said David. "First, I'm going to

show you a nice little convenience called the 'Flip'

key. In order to see the file you just created, you

would normally have to type its name in the SOURCE box

and the word CONSOLE in the DESTINATION box. But the

flip key does that for you, by just switching the

SOURCE and the DESTINATION around!"

He reached in front of Anne and pressed the

key so she could see what he meant. The words in the

SOURCE and DESTINATION boxes did change places.


Copying

"Now," continued David, "press the Copy key, ,

to look at what is in your file. The Copy key takes a

copy of whatever is in the SOURCE and puts it into the

DESTINATION. So it will take a copy of FIZZLE.TXT and

show it on the console so you can see it."

The screen cleared as Anne pressed the key.

The familiar screen with the rectangular boxes

returned, but with only the bottom box this time. In

that box, the same kind of nonsense appeared that she

had seen before. The line at the bottom of the screen

showed how many blocks had been copied. When the

program was finished, the prompt telling her how to get

back to the main menu appeared, so she pressed the

space bar and was back at the first form.



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-15]









"To get back my original text --" Anne began.

"By the way," David interrupted, "the original

text is called 'plain text' and the encrypted text is

called 'cipher text.'"

"To get back my plain text," continued Anne, "I

don't have to change anything on the screen now. I

just press the key marked DES Decipher and it will

decipher it?"

"That's right," agreed David, watching as she

pressed the key.

Again, the bottom rectangular box appeared, just

as when Anne used the copy function. But this time,

the text was plain text. No more nonsense.

When she got back to the main menu screen, Anne

pressed the key to highlight the DESTINATION

box. "This time, I'm going to decrypt the cipher text

into a file, so I can edit it with my word-processing

software," she declared.

She typed the file name:

FLAT.TXT

over the word CONSOLE, then pressed the key again,

to decrypt the cipher text in FIZZLE.TXT.

When the decryption finished, she left The

Confidant by pressing the key several times.

Then she used her word-processing software to look at

FLAT.TXT.

Satisfied that the text looked just as she

expected, she typed in some more sentences about

Franklin. She saved them and exited back to the

operating system.

"Now, I can encrypt this text," she said, typing

in the command CONFIDE and pressing the key.

"Yes," said David. "Just remember that a word-

processing program may insert some non-alphabetic

characters into your text file. When The Confidant

decrypts an encrypted version of such a text file onto

your console, the text may not look as it did when you

typed it in. To view it the way you typed it in, you

should decrypt the text to a file, then examine that

file using the same word-processing program you used to

create the original file."




[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-16]








Anne entered the file name FLAT.TXT into the

SOURCE box. She left the DESTINATION box as it was with

the word CONSOLE, and used her old password again.




------------------------------------------------------------
DOING IT

Practice entering encrypted text into a file, then

"flipping" the SOURCE and DESTINATION and looking at it.

Look at it with both the COPY and the DECRYPT options.

Here is some text to try:

Active wiretapping means that someone intercepts your

message while you are transmitting it. He changes it

quickly, then sends it on. The receiver never suspects that

the message he receives from you is not the one you sent.

Encryption helps make active wiretapping almost impossible.

------------------------------------------------------------


































[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-17]










Privacy

"Are you going to try out the Privacy

function?" David inquired.

"I wanted to ask about that." said Anne. "What

does it do, anyway?"

"Try it," suggested David.

She pressed the key. The destination box

filled up rapidly with nonsensical cipher text.

"It looks the same as when I used the DES Encipher
key," exclaimed Anne. "Only it's considerably faster."

"Precisely," said David. "Most people would never

be able to tell that it was not produced by the DES

algorithm, which is an extremely safe way of encoding

data. A trained cryptologist would be able to tell the

difference, after several hours of study. And he

might be able to break the Privacy code. As far as I

know, he would not be able to break the DES code."

"So this is not as safe," said Anne.

"No," said David. "But it is still very safe.

The vast majority of people will never figure out what

it produces. It is useful for encoding data that don't

have to be kept extremely secret, but that you don't

want everyone to see. That is probably 98% of the

stuff you do. So you save time by using the PRIVACY

code when you don't need the extreme protection offered

by DES."




------------------------------------------------------------
DOING IT

Try out PRIVACY. Notice how much faster it is than the

DES option. An extra use of PRIVACY is for

superencipherment, or encrypting your data twice, making it

extra hard to decode.

Use PRIVACY to encrypt a file you have Enciphered with

DES. Then decrypt it, using first Privacy, then DES
Decipher. You must decrypt in the REVERSE order you

encrypted, or decryption won't work.

------------------------------------------------------------



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-18]









Directory and Erase SOURCE

"I noted there are function keys for 'Directory'
and 'Erase SOURCE'," said Anne. "What do those keys
do?"

"As you probably guessed," said David, "the

or Directory key lists the files you have, in case you

forget the name of a file or want to check what you

have done so far. It will find just the file whose

name is in the SOURCE box, or if the SOURCE box is

empty or has the word CONSOLE in it, it will list all

the files on the default disk. The or Erase

SOURCE key erases the file whose name appears in the

SOURCE box."

"That is pretty much what I assumed," Anne said.

"I should mention that both functions allow you to

use so-called 'wildcard' characters," said David.

"That means if you have several files with similar

names, you can refer to all of them with just one

name."

"I think I know about wildcards," replied Anne.

"If I have three files, FIZZLE1, FIZZLE2, and FIZZLE3,

and I want to see a directory for all of them, I type

in

FIZZLE?

in the SOURCE box. The question mark on the end tells

the computer to find every file that starts with FIZZLE

and has any other character in the position where I put

the question mark. Then I press the key."

"And an asterisk or 'star' can be used too," added

David, "to mean 'all the positions in the file

description from here to the end.' For example, if you

want to erase all the files that start with 'FI' as the

first two letters, and end with an extension of TXT,

you would type

FI*.TXT

in the SOURCE box and press the key.



Using The Confidant to Transmit Data Over the Telephone

"I think I understand," Anne said, "Now, I want

to try --"




[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-19]








At that moment two heads poked through the

doorway into Anne's office. One was Barry Crocker, the
director of the company's cafeteria, who was cherished

by everyone for his superb pastries. The other was J.

Atwood Powers, president of Icey Beverage Co.

"Hey Doc!" Crocker hollered out to David. "It

came to me the other day that Icey is really a software

firm."

The other three people in the room stared at him,

puzzled.

"Yeah, you know, our wares are soft drinks, get

it? Soft wares." He laughed boisterously and waved

his hand as he left the office, leaving the others

chuckling.

"I was hoping to see you," Powers addressed David.

"Anne told me you were bringing some encryption

software. Could it be used to send data over the

telephone?"

"What do you have in mind?" asked David.

"My wife and I are flying to Finland tomorrow,

ostensibly for a vacation. They have wonderful lakes,

and their famous saunas, you know. But the real reason

for the visit is that our scouts have discovered a

recipe for a natural soft drink that the Finns drink

during their May Day celebrations. I intend to test it

out, get the recipe, and bring it back to see if we

want to start bottling it."

"Where does encryption fit in?" asked David.

"You know how fierce the competition is in the

soft drink bottling industry. I'm sure that other

companies will be keeping an eye open to find out my

plans and even to obtain a copy of the formula if

possible."

"So you want to encrypt the formula in order to

make it incomprehensible to them," said David.

"Exactly."

"But you mentioned something about the telephone,"

said Anne.

"Laura and I are going to be away for three

weeks," said Powers. "I thought it would speed things

up considerably if I could send the recipe over the

telephone. I don't want to sound alarmist, but it is a

well-known fact that some companies will gladly stoop



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-20]








to a bit of industrial espionage if needed. And just

in case, I'd rather play safe with something as

important as the formula for a new soft drink."

"I don't see that it will create any problem at

all," said the consultant. "You can take along a

portable computer that is compatible with the ones you

use here. Add a modem to that, some communications and

word-processing software, and The Confidant and you

should have no fear."

"Can you arrange the necessary equipment and

software?"

"Sure. But you'll need some time to get

acquainted with them. When do you leave?" asked David.

"Not until evening. But I have a full schedule.

The only time open is early morning. Can you meet me

here at six a.m.?"

David groaned. "And on a Saturday, too."

"I'll arrange for us to have breakfast while we're

at it. Can you be here too, Anne? You're the obvious

person to handle the transmission on this end."

"No problem," she said. "I'll do anything for

some of Barry's pastries."

"I'm going home for some sleep," kidded David.

"Even if it is only ten in the morning now," he

laughed. "See you in the morning," he said as he left.

Atwood Powers and Anne Lambert laughed too as they

went back to their other work.

* * *


David was unloading a portable computer and a

second copy of The Confidant from his car when Anne

Lambert drove up in the morning.

"Looks like Woody is already here," she said,

pointing to another car in the lot. "Hope Barry put

together something nice for us."

Inside, they found Powers reading through the User

Guide for The Confidant, and trying it out on Anne's

computer.

"There's really nothing to this," he said. "A

child could do it once he understood the basic idea.

How about if we run through the procedure we will use



[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-21]








to encrypt and transfer the soft drink formula. I

don't want to leave it anything to chance."

"Good idea," agreed David. "I think I'll have you

set up this computer and modem in your office, Woody.

Then you can go through the steps of entering the

formula, encrypting it, and sending it from there.

Anne can receive it from here, and decrypt it."

In his office, Powers plugged in the portable

computer, attached the modem cables, and switched it

on. Then he inserted his word-processing diskette in

the A drive and a blank, formatted diskette in the B

drive.

"I'll just type in a make-believe formula," he

said to David and Anne, who had followed him to his

office. In a few moments, he had created a reasonable

looking formula. "Maybe we should 'leak' this to our

competitors," he laughed. "It probably tastes awful."

Powers saved the text on the diskette in his B:

drive. "Alright," he said. "To encrypt this, I remove

my word-processing software and replace it with The

Confidant, right?"

Both David and Anne nodded.

"Then I type:

CONFIDE

and press . Now what?"

"Type the name of the file containing the

formula into the SOURCE box," said David.

Powers typed:

B:FORMULA.TXT

and pressed .

"Choose a name for the DESTINATION," Anne prompted.

Powers typed in:

B:FORMULA.CRY

"And then I make up a password," he said, pausing.

"Uh, David, I hope you won't feel badly. But the fewer

people who know the password for the new formula, the

better. Will you mind if I just show Anne. You can

stand behind the computer while I type it in."




[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-22]








David moved back. Anne bent forward to view the

password used by Powers. When she was sure she

remembered it, she nodded. Powers pressed the key

and the password disappeared.

"Alright David," he said. "It's all clear now."

"I can tell you have the right idea about

security," said David. "The Confidant cannot do it

all. Protecting your password is the best bet."

Powers pressed the key to encrypt his

formula. When the job was finished, he pressed the

key to "flip" the SOURCE and DESTINATION. Then he

pressed to look at the decrypted version. Just to

make sure, he finished up by pressing to look at a

copy of the encrypted file. As he expected, it was

nonsensical cipher text.

"Now," said Powers, "the next step is to transmit

it to Anne's computer. Then she can decrypt it." He

removed The Confidant from his diskette drive and

replaced it with some file transfer and communications

software that was capable of sending binary files.

"Anne, make sure your machine is ready to receive, will

you?"

Anne left the room. Powers lifted the receiver of

his phone and dialed her number. "All set?" he asked

when she answered.

"Okay," she replied.

Powers placed the receiver into his modem. Then

he used the telecommunications software to transfer

B:FORMULA.CRY to Anne's machine.


"All done," he said a few minutes later. "Now we

shall see how successful this was."

Atwood Powers and David Lyons marched into Anne

Lambert's office. She had already disconnected her

modem and replaced the communications software with The

Confidant.

As she typed in the name of the source file and

the password, hidden by the key, everyone waited

expectantly.

"Here we go," she said, pressing to decrypt.

A little shout of "Hurrah" went up from all three

watchers as The Confidant displayed the correct

decrypted text on the screen.




[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-23]








"I think we are going to have a very profitable

vacation," said Powers.

"Hey Doc," somebody said from behind the trio.

"I'm in the software business too, you know."

Everyone turned to look at Barry Crocker.

"Yeah," he continued. "My wares are very soft."

And he handed them a tray of fresh-baked pastries.

* * *



------------------------------------------------------------
DOING IT

By now, you should be ready for your graduation

exercise. Actually, it's a graduation gift. You have

earned a look at the secret formula that Atwood and Laura

Powers discovered in Finland. It is still in the original

form he sent back to Anne Lambert.

Powers didn't take time to convert its measurements for

production use by his company. It is still suitable for

homemade use. So if you want a head start on Icey, you

might make up a batch of your own.

If you have followed along with David Lyons, Anne

Lambert, and Atwood Powers, you should know how to decrypt

the formula. We will simply tell you that the file is named

CONFIDE.CRY. And the password is: FINNISH MAY DAY.

------------------------------------------------------------






















[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-24]










INDEX to the TUTORIAL



A
ASCII (code), 3

B
Block, 12, 15

C
Case, upper/lower in PASSWORD, 11
Cipher text, 16
Communications software to transmit encrypted text, 21, 23
CONSOLE, 9
Copying the SOURCE to the DESTINATION, 15
Cryptology, 4
Cursor, moving the, 14

D
Data Encryption Standard (DES) procedure, 4, 18
Deciphering, using DES procedure from a file, 16
Deleting text or characters, 14
DESTINATION of cipher text in encryption, 9, 22
of plain text in decryption, 15ff
of copied text, 15
Directory of existing files, 19
Diskette, copying and care of, 4
Disk drive, placing text on other than default, 14
Display (form), main, 7
encryption, 11,, 15

E
Enciphering using DES procedure, to the CONSOLE, 11
to a file, 14
Encryption, 3, 11
Ending encryption, 12
Erasing the SOURCE file, 19

F
File description, 14, 19
Flipping the SOURCE and DESTINATION names, 15

H
HELP displays, 7
Hiding the PASSWORD on the display, 11

I
Inserting text or characters, 14







[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-25]









P
Password, management, 13, 23
as used in encryption, 3, 7
PASSWORD for The Confidant, 9, 10
Password protection system, insecure, 2, 10
Plain text, 16
Privacy encryption procedure, 18
Protection of information, 1

S
SOURCE of plain text for encryption, 9, 11, 22
of cipher text for decryption, 15ff
of copied text, 15
as specifier for Directory search, 19
Starting encryption, 11

T
Transmission of encrypted information, 20f, 23

W
Wildcard characters in file descriptions, 19
Word-processing software changes appearance of text, 16


































[The Confidant Tutorial (C) 1983, 1984 by Data Sage - page T-26]







  3 Responses to “Category : Databases and related files
Archive   : CONFIDE.ZIP
Filename : TUTORIAL.DOC

  1. Very nice! Thank you for this wonderful archive. I wonder why I found it only now. Long live the BBS file archives!

  2. This is so awesome! 😀 I’d be cool if you could download an entire archive of this at once, though.

  3. But one thing that puzzles me is the “mtswslnkmcjklsdlsbdmMICROSOFT” string. There is an article about it here. It is definitely worth a read: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/mtswslnk/