Ever wanted to send an encrypted message in an email but haven’t wanted the trouble or difficulty of obtaining a digital certificate?

Chibi Ninja, a new app released yesterday, might be for you. It allows you send an encrypted message (and image if you want) through Apple Mail which the recipient can decode using the same password you encrypted it with.

When you launch the app you are presented with its decryption window:

This offers you the choice of one of four encryption standards or ciphers — blowfish 128 bits, cast 128 bits, desx, 192 bits or rc5, 128 bits — for the message and a box to enter your chosen password.

Clicking the Chibi Ninja Mail button opens a message editor in which you compose the message. It allows you to add one image to the message, and to compose mixed messages in English and one other language (currently it supports Bulgarian, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian).

You can also enter a comment to accompany the message that will not be encrypted and auto-generate a password for the message. You will need to send the password that you choose to the recipient. The developer suggests by phone or by hand.

When finished, clicking the editor’s “Create Mail” button launches the encrypted message in a Mail.app email:

Send it and then the recipient can copy the encrypted part to their clipboard, launch Chibi Ninja, enter the password that you sent them and decrypt the message.

Chibi Ninja is cross-platform, which means that this process will work for messasges received on any kind of computer.

Chibi Ninja is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from the developer’s web site.

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• ChibiNinja 1.1 Easy encrypted email, images, files
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Tags: Apple Mail, email, encryption, mail.app

This entry was posted on Saturday, 31st December, 2005 at 12:53 am and is filed under Apple Mail, Apple Mail Plug-ins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.