forum.vdsworld.com

Serge · Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 12:37 pm Post subject: blowfish.dll problems

hi,

i'm not sure who to address this post to...i am having some intermittent yet consistent problems with blowfish02.dll and vds 5...i have been using the first version of blowfish.dll with vds 4.5 for a long time and never had any problems with it but that first version does not like vds 5 and often causes an error...i hence tried blowfish02.dll and it is more stable but still it crashes every once in a while...sometimes the program runs fine and sometimes it doesn't

now i use blowfish in all my programs as part of the registration process and i cannot release any program under vds 5 that uses blowfish02.dll

i have a program ready to release but i can't because it uses blowfish to encrypt a file and if an error occurs, then the data is lost for good...not acceptable for my users!

anyone else found similar problems with blowfish and can it be fixed...please Smile

serge

PGWARE · **Web Host** Joined: 29 Dec 2001 Posts: 1562

Hello Serge,
For sometime I use to process the r e g i s trations for this dll on behalf of Pablo. The dll is the property of Pablo but he has since gone on to other projects. I don't think he actively develops in vds anymore and I haven't heard back from him in years.

For legal reasons (US export r e g ulations) I can't make any changes to the dll otherwise I would be in violation of US export laws. However the dll does come with Delphi source code, you may want to see if anyone here might want to update it for you.

For some reason the board is blocking the partial word r e g ??

FreezingFire · **Admin Team** Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 3508

Serge · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:47 am Post subject:

thanks for your reply pg and i must say that i am annoyed that pablo would bring out a new version of blowfish (late last year?) and yet he will not support it...i am one of his customers and because of blowfish not working i am severly handicaped as to what to do because i can't use vds 5 (which i paid for) and either version of blowfish (which i also paid for)

as i mentioned earlier, all my programs use blowfish for registration purposes but also 2 of my current programs use blowfish to encrypt sensitive data...this means that i cannot port these programs to vds 5 hence adding all sorts of new features i wanted to

if anyone can help with blowfish, i would greatly appreciate it...i have some US$20 in my paypal account that you can have if you can help make blowfish.dll work properly...it's not much but it's all i have at the moment

the error i get is "error in an external command or function"

thanks

serge

FreezingFire · **Admin Team** Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 3508

You can also use the VDSCRYPT.DLL - this offers blowfish encryption as
well as many other types and is compatible with VDS 5. Smile

Serge · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:09 am Post subject:

thanks for the suggestion ff...i will look into it...as i need something i can depend on to work properly and also to have the problems fixed if there are any

serge

PGWARE · **Web Host** Joined: 29 Dec 2001 Posts: 1562

Serge - actually I made that update for Pablo with the vdsblowfish; this was before I knew about export regulations and thus I can no longer put myself into any legal issues that might be involved with that.

Pablo has not himself updated that dll in some time.

You may be able to use Tommy's vdsdll to load the blowfish using (vdsrundll ?) . This should allow non-compatible vds extensions to work with vds 5.

Serge · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 6:40 am Post subject:

thanks for your reply pg...i didn't know that you updated the last version and i understand about the export regulations...

don't worry about it...i am looking at vdsencrypt as an alternative...it is affordable and produced by someone from the vds community which means it should be appropriately supported

i'm not sure that tommy's dll would work as blowfish02.dll produces an error only when it feels like it...there seems to be no predictable way to tell when it will work and when it won't...i could run the program 10 times and it will crash twice!!!...it's a strange thing as it works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't...ggrr!!!

thanks for your time pg

serge

X-Tools · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 6:56 am Post subject:

Hi Serge,

I got your mail. I will look into paypal and send you an email how to buy through paypal.

Bye, Fabian

Serge · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 12:57 am Post subject:

hi fabian,

i have come across an annoying problem with vdsencrypt.dll...i use it to encrypt the contents of tables (one row at a time) and because table items must contain tabs, the resulting encrypted string contains @CR() which means that the one string now looks like 2 or more lines instead of being the one line...and of course, i save the table content to a file on my hard disk

now, when the time comes for me to decrypt the file content, i come across an error because the encrypted string is only partial due to it being split between several lines...if i manually restore the encrypted string to the one line then all is well otherwise i get an error

is that something you can fix at your end or do i need to build into my code a sub routine to remove any added @CR() to the resulting encrypted string?...or is there a length limit to the encrypted string after which it creates a new line?

the alternative is to encrypt the file but i don't want to use that as it is less secure on account of possibly having the uncrypted file left on the hard disk if the computer crashes before the file is encrypted

hope all this makes sense

serge

X-Tools · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 4:58 am Post subject:

Hi Serge,

could you send me an example code ?

Bye, Fabian

Serge · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 7:29 am Post subject:

hi fabian,

i have sent it to you as an email as it contains code bits and pieces that i need to keep confidential Smile

serge

Serge · Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 1:53 am Post subject:

hi fabian,

i have been using vdscrypt.dll for some time and need to report a "bug" that i need fixing, please Smile

i use your dll to check that users are registered users when they run the program...it does this by checking specific registry entries

i also use it in 2 programs to encrypt/decrypt entries that users add to the programs

in both cases, i always come across the same problem...for reasons unknown to me, sometimes the dll works great and sometimes it produces an error...the error is produced at random and is intermittent in that i could run it 3 times without any errors, and the next 2 times it will crash

could you please have a look at it...testing it should be easy, just run a continuous loop to encrypt and decrypt a string, and the error should occur...i will try that myself today

thanks fabian

serge

X-Tools · Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:23 am Post subject:

Hi Serge,

do you use the latest version of the dll ?

Bye, Fabian

Serge · Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:57 am Post subject:

i think so...how can i tell?

the mystery deepens ... i ran a loop of encrypting a registry entry 100,000 times and no error! in fact i did it several times and no error

the problem that i have is that vds frequently reports an error on the line that does the encrypting and decrypting...and it only does so every once in a while...i assume therefore that my code is ok otherwise it would report an error on that line all the time...hence i thought that may be there is a problem with the dll...i could be wrong...any ideas?

serge