Rogue Developer Encrypted our efs

[dennehey]

We have a number of efs files that perform countless automated trading functions as part of our day to day business.

Until recently, we had a developer who took care of the creation and maintenance of these scripts, but have since left the organisation (on less than amiable terms).

We have now found that they have encrypted (I think that's the term) all of our scripts, and our new developer is unable to access the scripts to make required changes.

The developer responsible for this is (unsurprisingly) not returning calls or emails.

Does anyone have any clue how we can gain access to these?

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

Brian

[gspiker]

I doubt that eSignal put any backdoors on their encryption, so I don't believe there is any way to do this.

You might try some simple passwords, like the name of your company, etc. They may have been encrypted for a long time with the same password.

If your sure that they added the password to be malicious, you could look for backups or older copies. If you do regular backups you might be able to retrieve non encrypted versions.

Other than that, you might be reduced to legal action to obtain the password, or equitable relief from the programmer. The mere thought of the amount of $$ that could be may be enough to drive him to give up the password long before trial. Sometimes just slapping people with the law suit works wonders.

[eSignal_JasonK]

-

Hello Brian,

Garth is correct, we do not have any back doors. If the formulas were encrypted with the Basic encryption, then a password (if you have it) can open the file. If Enhanced encryption was used, there is no password. The Enhanced encryption process creates a separate encrypted file and leaves the original source code file alone.

If you have the developer's computer(s) that the scripts were created on you may have some options.

I assume you've already searched for all .efs files? The original unencrypted source code files may still be present.

The other two things I would suggest is to check the deleted items folder. There's a small chance there could be some files there that haven't been deleted yet. Not likely if the developer was disgruntled. However, the files are still on the hard drive if it hasn't bee reformatted. If you have not been saving new files or installing software, the space the deleted files reside in should still be in tact. Especially if the hard drive still has a significant amount of space unused. A good file recovery program can restore the files by file type or name. You could also take the machines to a company that provides data recovery services.

Hope this helps. Good luck.