Tasker now only through Google Play - Encryption not anymore possible then?

[francwalter]

Hello

I just wanted to buy for my friends tablet Tasker. As I would like to have encryption feature I searched it on the website, but there "suddenly" I read that Tasker is not anymore available directly, only through Google Play:

http://tasker.dinglisch.net/faq-ov.html#dh

This means, because of the US-export limitations that in Germany I am not able to buy or use a Tasker version with encryption anymore, right?

Frank

[Pent]

This means, because of the US-export limitations that in Germany I am not able to buy or use a Tasker version with encryption anymore, right?

Buy - no, use - only if you have a preexisting code for the direct-purchase version.

Been like that about 5 years...

Pent 

[Frank Röhm]

I bought tasker in about end 2011, first through Google and then it was changed later to a normal license with enabled encryption.
Not five years.

[Pent]

I bought tasker in about end 2011, first through Google and then it was changed later to a normal license with enabled encryption.

Not five years.

The situation now is the same as it was end 2011.

You can use the same code from 2011 to enable  the direct-purchase version.

The change is not being able to use a new Google purchase to unlock the direct-purchase version,
which was done in 2013 if I remember right.

Pent

[Frank Röhm]

Am 24. Januar 2015 20:39:09 MEZ, schrieb Pent <crafty...@gmail.com>:
>...

>The change is not being able to use a new Google purchase to unlock the
>
>direct-purchase version,
>which was done in 2013 if I remember right.

Ah, now understand. I bought from Google Play in 2011, changed it to the direct pay version in 2012 but this was not anymore possible after 2013.

So I was lucky because this was the only way at this time to get the encryption.
So today there is no way to get a version with encryption anymore.
Which feels a bit strange in these days.

[Robert Ryan]

It makes little sense for Pent to fight the U.S. government on this, especially when other solutions are available.

Have you looked at APG? Made by a German company, it is one of the best apps for symmetric and asymmetric encryption available on Google Play.

[Frank Röhm]

Am 24. Januar 2015 20:58:46 MEZ, schrieb Robert Ryan <rbr...@gmail.com>:
>It makes little sense for Pent to fight the U.S. government on this,
>especially when other solutions are available.

As Tasker plugin?

>Have you looked at APG? Made by a German company...

Compan? I thought this is one guy, thialfiar. Didn't think he German by the way but don't know.
Yes, I know it, used it for k9mail till openkeychain was developed, which is already better and still in progress (development).

APG is dead since 2011, there was a very short revival March 2014, but again no more development. But it's working, though.
There is no plugin for tasker with APG, so this is not really a solution here.

[Frank Röhm]

Am 24. Januar 2015 20:58:46 MEZ, schrieb Robert Ryan <rbr...@gmail.com>:

>...
>Have you looked at APG? Made by a German company...

I looked now to the whois and thialfihar.org is registered from Oliver Runge from Berlin ( oliver.runge-at-gmail.com) , indeed Germany :)
Unfortunately he is invisible since a while, I read.

Should be possible to create a Tasker plugin from his code as it is open-source in Github.
But I don't know how to do that, would take ages for me.

[Robert Ryan]

Thanks for pointing out OpenKeychain :) I hadn't realized how far behind APG was in development, my bad.

As for plug-ins, Autoinput and Autoshare can be used as the bridge between Tasker and OpenKeychain.

[Scott Miller]

If I'm not mistaken, Open Keychain is a fork of APG. The latest description of APG indicates that changes to Open Keychain have been rolled into APG, although Open Keychain still has more recent update activity. APG also indicates that it has an intent api. Open Keychain, being a fork, might also have this. If so, you could use Tasker's intent actions to directly control it without a plugin. I have not looked into this, so I don't know how well it's documented.

Scott

[Frank Röhm]

>
> Am 25.01.2015 um 00:26 schrieb Robert Ryan <rbr...@gmail.com>:
>
> Thanks for pointing out OpenKeychain :) I hadn't realized how far behind APG was in development, my bad.
>
> As for plug-ins, Autoinput and Autoshare can be used as the bridge between Tasker and OpenKeychain.
>

Ah, thanks.
I read:
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/plugins-intro.html
and see, that it seems a bit too worky for me ;)

As I understand and see it, OpenKeychain is not doing symmetric encryption, only asymmetric for use in mail etc.
So APG would still be the candidate to use for encryption.

> Am 25.01.2015 um 01:12 schrieb Scott Miller <sjmill...@gmail.com>:
>
> If I'm not mistaken, Open Keychain is a fork of APG. The latest description of APG indicates that changes to Open Keychain have been rolled into APG, although Open Keychain still has more recent update activity. APG also indicates that it has an intent api. Open Keychain, being a fork, might also have this. If so, you could use Tasker's intent actions to directly control it without a plugin. I have not looked into this, so I don't know how well it's documented.
>
> Scott
>

Yes, OpenKeychain was forked from APG and made much better to use in k9mail. Then the APG dev “thialfihar” woke up from his deep sleep and reforked uncomplete stuff from OpenKeychain to APG and left a broken API and disappeared again, read here:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.guardian.devel/620

Anyway, APG is really great and important work and even when since k9mail version 5.102 it is removed from k9mail integration, it is still usable for symmetric encryption.

[francwalter]

Now I found this old thread here in this group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tasker/5bowRuVhTj0


What I really not understand is, why there is not at least a weak (US-export-allowed) encryption in the Play Store version?

I mean, anyway Tasker encryption is closed source and nobody but Pent knows if there is a backdoor in it, so use of encryption in Tasker is only a thing to hide things from maybe a simple thief but not from any governmental service.
Nobody could seriously use Tasker's encryption if there is the 100% need to encrypt something that no security agency wheresoever should be able to decrypt.

So just a simple and weak e.g. 56-Bit ARC4 or something similar breakable cypher which is allowed to export from US could do the thing.

When I use Tasker's encryption, I use a very simple and weak password anyway, its just to disable casually snooping into the data.

[Pent]

There's a middle ground between total paranoia 'the developer could be a CIA operative, so we have to assume it's broken already' and 'so what's the point, let's just use XOR,

at least 10 year olds will have difficulty reading it', and I think it's bit higher than 56 bit keys.

Pent

[francwalter]

Am Sonntag, 25. Januar 2015 14:36:21 UTC+1 schrieb Pent:

... let's just use XOR ...

... which neither is included as "encryption" in Tasker, if I searched well.

 

[Pent]

... let's just use XOR ...

... which neither is included as "encryption" in Tasker, if I searched well. 

True, but Base64 is even better (see Variable Convert).

Pent

[Wietse van Buitenen]

I was also looking into an alternative a few months ago but didn't have time to complete it..

An option would be to use non browser JavaScript in a JavaScriptlet:

https://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/

and an example that uses file encryption

http://tutorialzine.com/2013/11/javascript-file-encrypter/

I tested this in WebView at the time but couldn't select a file (if I remember correctly)

Also, perhaps with the added Java it can be done that way..

[Pent]

Tasker uses these Android libraries:

import java.security.spec.AlgorithmParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.CipherInputStream;
import javax.crypto.CipherOutputStream;
import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.IvParameterSpec;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec;

In case it's helpful.

Pent

[Robert Ryan]

francwalter said "As I understand and see it, OpenKeychain is not doing symmetric encryption, only asymmetric for use in mail"

OpenKeychain also has symmetric encryption, it's in the options menu.

[Abdullah Alahdal]

Can anyone help and share Java Functions action using Android libraries for encryption and decryption.

I'm not a programmer.

[Frank Röhm]

Hi, no, there is no symmetric encryption in OpenKeychain, at least not findable for me. To clarify I made two screenshots, attached. One with APG, where you can send a file to APG and choose the encryption, which is not possible in OpenKeychain, as you can see.
I just don't find it there.

[Robert Ryan]

Hmm, it is available in the U.S. version. See attached screenshot. I have version 3.1.2. What version do you have?

[Frank Röhm]

Am 26. Januar 2015 14:29:46 MEZ, schrieb Robert Ryan <rbr...@gmail.com>:
>Hmm, it is available in the U.S. version. See attached screenshot.

Oh! Thank you! !
With your screenshot I found it :)
It's the menu to click, but different than APG, great! Now I can uninstall APG
Thank

[Wietse van Buitenen]

Thanks a lot for the additional info Pent, much appreciated!

I don't think I will have time to look into it sadly but I will store the info in case I'm wrong :)

And as I think it will be a challenge, I'm sure others will post here in case they get some results.