Earlier today we posted about a good open-source file encryption software called XProtect. While it is really nice looking software, it offers only one cipher and does not integrate into the Windows File Explorer. If you want those features too then you can try another open-source program called CrococryptFile. It offers many different ciphers and integrates well into the File Explorer. But CrococryptFile is designed using the Oracle Java and therefore you would have to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) before you can use CrococryptFile in your PC. If you do not want to install JRE, then the developer also offers a special full package that contains embedded JRE.
CrococryptFile is available in both the portable and the setup installer package. The portable package does not install the File Explorer context-menu handler and actually did not work very well when we tested it. On the other hand, the setup installer package worked perfectly well on the same computer.
After installing CrococryptFile in Windows, you can right-click on any file, a group of files, a folder, a group of folders or a group of files & folders and choose Encrypt via CrococryptFile from the right-click context menu.
You will be shown a small window where you would be able see the files or folders that are going to be encrypted and would be able to pick a cipher. There are so many ciphers you can pick from the drop-down list – AES, Twofish, Serpent, Camellia, Windows Keystore (RSA-AES), GPG (PGP-AES), cloaked encryption (AES-Twofish) and more. In the cloaked encryption, it removes the header of the encrypted file and adds random bytes at the end of the file to make it harder to analyze the file.
After making a selection of the encryption method, you can just click on the large button to proceed with the encryption. It will ask you password depending on the encryption method you have selected. The encrypted file is saved with an extension CROCO and you can double-click on it to decrypt its contents.
Conclusion: CrococryptFile is an open-source file encryption program for Windows. It offers multiple ciphers like AES, Serpent, Twofish, Camellia etc. It integrates well into Windows File Explorer and allows encryption or decryption of files/folders just by right-clicking on them.
You can download CrococryptFile from http://www.frankhissen.de/crococryptfile-homepage-en.html.