With security experts, the rule of thumb is that you can only trust the encryption that you perform yourself and that you should not blindly rely on cloud providers that supposedly protect your data. In that regard, Picocrypt is a newcomer that works quickly and efficiently.
Picocrypt
Price
For free
Language
English
OS
Windows
Website
www.bit.ly/picohack
8 Score 80 
- Pros
- New form of encryption
- Simple
- Negatives
- No speed gain on CPU with AES instruction set
Pico in the name of this open source encryptor indicates a very small app, only 3 MB. Picocryp’s focus is on security, with the application perhaps looking less appealing visually than other ciphers.
Picocrypt comes in different versions: for the Windows PC, as a portable zip archive and as an installer. It is possible that the portable .exe file triggers the virus detection, but that is a false alarm. It has to do with the fact that the archive uses the self-extracting format of 7-Zip to bundle Python together with Picocrypt.
ChaCha
The innovation lies in the technique that Picocrypt uses for encryption, namely XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2(id) for deriving the key. This while the hundreds of tools we now know use the popular AES encryption. One of the advantages of the new encryption is that it is much faster than AES if your computer’s processor does not support a special AES instruction set. However, if your computer is equipped with a CPU with AES acceleration, encryption with Picocrypt will be slower.
drag and drop
The tool works on the drag-and-drop principle. Run the program and drag and drop the files into the Picocrypt window. Then you can enter a password, which you can use to open the file. In addition, there is an option to delete the original file immediately after encryption. You can also prevent file corruption by using the Reed-Solomon method that recovers any damaged bytes. You’ll need to repeat the password one more time for security, then click Pcv File to start encryption.
pcv file
The encrypted file is written as a file with the pcv extension. Decoding is done in the opposite direction. You drag the pcv file into the work window, you type the password and click on Start. Finally, Picocrypt also has a tab to thoroughly delete files.
Conclusion
Picocrypt is an easy-to-use and small file encryption tool. Especially if your computer does not have an AES instruction set, you will benefit from this newcomer. The maximum file size you can encrypt is 256 GB.
