Inline encryption

May 30 2012

When I take notes in an editor or Googledocs or Evernote or whatever I use at the time I sometimes have information I really want to jot down in the contents of the notation.  An example would be name of a server and then usr/pwd at the same or next line.
Having 1 secret thing in a document makes the whole document equally secret.  That is a shame when the rest of the document can be read by colleagues and customers.

A solution can be to encrypt just the sensitive stuff.  In an editor it could be prefixed with <encrypted> or <encrypted login=”uniquename”> like so:

The database for system Zoomba is on machine SRVZoomba12/MySQL1 usr/pwd:sa<encrypted name=”zoombadb”>slkjfelaskdnflaufksjdnlsiuhfsf</encrypted>.
MrM knows more.


Just copy everything between, or including, the tags to an application and enter the password that corresponds with your name.  If you have an intelligent enough editor you can have a macro for the same; position yourself in the tag and choose Decrypt from a menu.

This way you can have a document with secret data without being afraid of it getting into the wrong hands.

One could also replace the encrypted data with a URI to an online storage or application for your secret data.  Working within the Microsoft stack one could have ones domain usr as name/login and let it work without having to enter any password.

One can have the same concept within a (text) field in a database.  Instead of encrypting the whole field and missing out on all the index capatibilities just encrypt the secret stuff.  This could also simplify some user management.

I see some difficult design choices when I mentally try to adapt the idea to a team and a person and a team of teams and some roles.  What makes it difficult is more of user/passphrase handling and not of implementation crypto wise.

Emacs has something like this with its org-crypt.el.
Evernote has it built in.  The encrypted text is replace with a small icon.  Open it and enter you password.  Simple enough.

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