FathCrypt

FathCrypt is an ActiveX control and COM component you can use to encrypt your sensitive data with state-of-the-art 256-bit AES (Rijndael) encryption.
It has method to encrypt/decrypt strings or files. You can even encrypt/decrypt files from/to memory.

Features:

- 256-bit AES file/string encryption
- MD5 / SHA-1 / SHA-2 (up to 512 bits) file or string digest
- Diffie-Hellman key-agreement protocol methods
- Shred files using multiple-overwrite technique
- Base64 encode/decode methods

What is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)?

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) will be a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication that will specify a cryptographic algorithm for use by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive (unclassified) information. NIST also anticipates that the AES will be widely used on a voluntary basis by organizations, institutions, and individuals outside of the U.S. Government - and outside of the United States - in some cases.

What is the chance that someone could use the "DES Cracker"-like hardware to crack an AES key?

In the late 1990s, specialized "DES Cracker" machines were built that could recover a DES key after a few hours. In other words, by trying possible key values, the hardware could determine which key was used to encrypt a message.
Assuming that one could build a machine that could recover a DES key in a second (i.e., try 255 keys per second), then it would take that machine approximately 149 thousand-billion (149 trillion) years to crack a 128-bit AES key. To put that into perspective, the universe is believed to be less than 20 billion years old.

Here is how it looks in code:

FathCryptCtrl1.Key="password"
FathCryptCtrl1.EncryptFile "open.txt","crypted.txt"
FathCryptCtrl1.DecryptFile "crypted.txt","open.txt"
Dim encText As String
encText = FathCryptCtrl1.EncryptData("my password")
Print encText
Print FathCryptCtrl1.DecryptData(encText)