Dallas based Airscanner Corporation, announced the upcoming release of Airscanner Mobile Encrypter beta. The Airscanner Mobile Encrypter is an application that secures the user's data residing on the personal data assistant and provides the facility to lock the device in order to disallow its use by other users.

It uses optional, popular encryption and decryption algorithms such as 40-bit RC2, 40-bit RC4 and 56-bit DES in conjunction with Microsoft's Enhanced CryptoAPI that supports 128-bit AES encryption/decryption algorithms. The encryption/decryption will be done at the file and folder levels; each file can be encrypted/decrypted by its own key. Other features include:

Secure password protection with auto-lock on power-off - The application enables the user to set a password to lock the device. When the device is locked, other users cannot access any other interface on the device apart from the password login screen. To use the device, the user must be able to provide the correct password. Once the user accesses the device, she can manually lock the device. Once the user sets up the password for auto lock, the device will automatically lock itself after 'power-off', with no other user commands or interaction required

Prevents "brute-force" attacks by limiting password attempts with the "wipe" feature - The application provides a data dump feature if too many unauthorized attempts are made to guess or crack the password.


Protects the device even after a reset - On a locked device, PDA Encrypter cannot be by-passed by a "soft-reset".

The download link should be soon available from the company web site.

In the other news, AirScanner announced the discontinuation of Airscanner Mobile Sniffer. This extremely useful tool, capable of detecting and sniffing wireless networks, was supposed to be updated for the Microsoft Mobile 2003 platform until the end of this year. The official reason for the closure was a lack of user demand. Partially good ending to this story is that another company licenced the code, so I presume that soon we will see "the son of the Sniffer".