SMatters Image Viewer 1.2

Main Purpose - FREE ENCRYPTION

Image Viewer's purpose is to be able to encrypt / protect images that you do not want others to see. They could be photos of patent drawings or photos of a delicate nature that you need to keep from prying eyes. So, you can encrypt images or photos easily and ensure that when you view protected images, no trace temp files are ever created.

You can download the free Image Viewer program by clicking on the following link.

Download ImageViewer.EXE protection program now.
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Basically you will want to protect files and view the protected files. You will also want this program to appear like a basic simple viewer that has nothing to do with encryption to prying eyes that accidentally run this program. This is very simple to do.
 
 

    ^P ^R ^O ^T ^E ^C ^T

The ^ symbol is the CTRL key. So, basically you hold down on the control key and then type PROTECT and THEN let up off the control key. This brings up the protection panel and allows you to view protected files and to protect files. If someone enters the room whom you do not want to see the protection panel, then click the "HIDE PANEL" button. Or you can take the longer route and type the  ^P ^R ^O ^T ^E ^C ^T  sequence again and the protection panel gets turned off.
N O T E : REMEMBER that if the protection panel is not visible, then you can not view protected files nor can you protect files and as further security for you, prying eyes will not be able to detect that this is an encryption program, they will just think it's a crude basic simple viewer.
 
 

It's very easy to encrypt an image. Just follow these simple steps.
1. Make sure the protection panel is visible by typing the   ^P ^R ^O ^T ^E ^C ^T  sequence.
2. Checkmark one of the 4 fake photos you want to embed into the final protected file.
3. Optionally, you can choose a different image as your fake photo if you don't like any of the standard 4 fake images by using the "Browse Fake" button.
4. Click "Protect File"
5. Choose an image to protect
6. Enter password twice
7. Enter password hint (in case you forget your password later)
8. The protected file will then attempt to be loaded to see if the protection process worked
9. You are then asked to delete the original file
10. If you didn't delete the original, then you get a warning.
11. The new protected file has "_IV_2" appended to the original filename.
 
 

It's very easy to view an encrypted / proteced image. Just follow these simple steps.
1. Make sure the protection panel is visible by typing the   ^P ^R ^O ^T ^E ^C ^T  sequence.
2. Click the "View File" button in the upper left portion of the program.
3. Select a file to view.
4. If the file is protected, then it will ask you for a password. It shows you the HINT that you had typed in when you protected the file in the first place, in case you have forgotten the password at a later date.
5. If it's a protected file and it doesn't ask you for a password, then the protection panel is NOT visible. Make it visible using the sequence in step #1.
 
 

It's very easy to check for more recent versions of the program. Just follow these simple steps.
1. Make sure the protection panel is visible by typing the   ^P ^R ^O ^T ^E ^C ^T  sequence.
2. Click the "Help" menu item then choose the "About" menu item. Remember, if you don't have the protection panel visible, then you won't see the "Check for newer version" button. This is so that prying eyes that accidentally run this program won't realize what type of program this is :)
 

Typically, other programs that protect a file (any file) will encrypt it with a password. Then the only way to see the original document would be to decrypt the file with the same password. This is the simple way. The major reason you do NOT want to encrypt in this manner is because when prying eyes go to view the document, it will be obvious that the document is either corrupted or encrypted because the document loader will complain about the file not being in the correct format. You do NOT want to give any clues that a file is encrypted.

Image Viewer will encrypt a file and it will do it in such a manner that the resulting file WILL LOAD PERFECTLY into any standard viewing program like MS Paint, or Adobe PhotoShop or Photo Jockey or IrfanView etc... The prying eyes will see some fake photo. It may be an image of a flower or a water fall or a snow scene etc... The prying eyes will not realize that there is actaully another image in that file to be viewed.

This program also allows you to delete the original file when you are finished encrypting / protecting. By allowing the program to do the delete, you are ensured that the file is truely erased using a SECURE-DELETE process. See, if you delete a file with the Windows file manager, the deleted file will either go into the Recycle Bin or the directory entry for the file will just be removed. In either case, it's simple to recover the deleted file. The Image Viewer program deletes the original file in a more PERMANENT way. First, ZEROS are written to the file then it's deleted. That way if prying eyes recovers your deleted files, all they get back is a bunch of zeros :) This is a SECURE-DELETE.

Most other encryption programs will create temp files when decrypting the files for viewing purposes. These temp files are typically deleted once the image is viewed on the screen. So, the temp file doesn't stick around for very long. Maybe a second or two.  BUT there is still a chance that if your system locked up WHILE LOADING the protected image then that temp file will NOT have a chance to be deleted. This means once you reboot, the temp file "could" be viewed by anybody. Image Viewer does NOT create ANY temp files when viewing the protected file so that no matter what, there are NO REMNANTS that can be traced. The ONLY thing that the program does is to decrypt the file into RAM and then VIEW it on the screen. So, if you get a system lock up, or close the program normally, there will BE NOTHING left behind to trace what you have looked at. The only exception to this would be if you were on a network and the network administrator had installed specail Screen Monitor capture software. Then they could see what you are seeing in real time.

The Image Viewer will NOT ask for a password for password protected files in it's normal mode of operation. It will merely show the fake image that is embedded into the encrypted file. That way if prying eyes finds this special Image Viewer program and just so happens to click to load and view a protected file, they will have NO CLUE that the file is protected!!!! :))))) The only way to get it to ask for a password is if you turn on the Protection Panel with the ^P ^R ^O ^T ^E ^C ^T sequence.
 

It's highly suggested that you delete the original file after you have protected it so that prying eyes won't be able to see the originals. Of course if you delete the original, then YOU won't be able to see the originals either UNLESS you use this Image Viewer program to view them!!.

For organizational purposes you might want all the files you want to encrypt located inside the Image Viewer program folder. You should MOVE the images that you want to protect into the Image Viewer folder. You should NOT COPY them into the folder. See, if you COPY the images into the folder, then that means there is another copy of the delicate images on your hard drive. You may think that you could COPY the images into the folder and then delete the source files from where you had copied the files from. This essentially is a move, BUT NOT QUITE the same. By doing a COPY and then a DELETE, you will end up with the files you want in the Image Viewer folder, BUT the source files that you delete are deleted in the NON-SECURE way. That means they "could" be recovered if prying eyes were suspicious and tried to un-delete your deleted files. If, instead you do a MOVE, then of course you will still have the proper files in the Image Viewer folder, BUT THE GOOD THING is that there will not be a trace deleted file that could later be un-deleted!!!!!!!! This only works if you MOVE files to a folder on the SAME drive. If you MOVE files across drives, then you WILL have trace deleted files that "could" be un-deleted. In this case, if you don't want to do a MOVE across drives (because of the NON-SECURE-DELETE), then you can just LEAVE the files where they are and when you use Image Viewer to protect the file, you will need to browse to where the file you want to protect is located. Once the protection is completed, it will ask if you want the program to delete the file for you using a SECURE-DELETE.
 
 

Although this Image Viewer program uses a SECURE-DELETE process, the file "could" still be recovered by the department of defense. They have extremely expensive equipment that can monitor the magnetic impressions. A good analogy would be tape recordings. If you record a message over an older message and then play back the new message on the tape, if you listen real carefully you can hear the old message in the background but very faint and very low volume. What the expensive equipment does is to use a high pass filter and a low pass filter to aquire the data using enhanced signal to noise ratio techniques. Once the underlying bit pattern is saved it can be looked at. The problem is that as you keep saving on the same spot on the disk, the expensive equipment "may" not be able to determine "which" set of signals is the one to isolate. Thus they may get back even older data and not the data they were looking for. So, it's time consuming and not perfect, but in cases where national security is at risk, they will try anything. So, if you are a normal person using it for normal purposes, then this program is very secure. If, on the other hand, you are some kind of spy in which your computer may fall into the hands of intelligence agencies, don't count on this program as being 100% secure for you.