These days you can find hundreds of file encryption tools that can encrypt files using the popular AES cipher. But tools that use other newer ciphers are not so common. An open-source tool called Picocrypt is such an example. It makes use of the ChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithm for encrypting files. This cipher is much faster than AES if your computer’s CPU does not support dedicated AES instruction set.
Picocrypt is available in many different packages for Windows PC – as an installer, as a portable ZIP archive and also as a portable archive when your PC does not have Windows Script Host (WSH). It is also available for macOS but there is no release for Linux systems yet.
Picocrypt offers a very simple drag-n-drop approach. Just launch Picocrypt and then you can drag your files over the Picocrypt window. As you drop the file, it will show you options to enter the encryption password, whether to securely erase original file and, prevent file corruption using the Reed-Solomon method. After entering the password twice, you can click on the Start button to begin the encryption.
The encrypted files are renamed and PCV is appended to their filenames. These files can be decrypted in exactly the same manner as you have encrypted them. You have to launch Picocrypt, drag-n-drop the encrypted files on its window, supply the password and click on the “Start” button. The decrypted file will be saved in the same folder as the original file.
Picocrypt is a small and easy-to-use file encryption tool. It uses a strong cipher for the encryption but it can take longer time when encrypting large files. If you are thinking of encrypting very large files, then you should look for AES based encryption tools because newer CPUs come with AES instruction set making encryption/decryption much faster.
You can download Picocrypt from https://github.com/HACKERALERT/Picocrypt.