STRIP for OS X 2.5.0 was released about 12 days ago, just wanted to make a note here for any who hadn’t seen the post in our discussion forum. For Mac App Store customers, the update should be available soon, the app is currently under review. This may be the nicest release of this version yet, with a lot of bug fixes, an improved login experience, window handling, and auto-suggest for frequently used values.

STRIP for Windows 2.5.4 has just been released, a priority patch release that addresses application locking.

You should receive a notification the next time you launch STRIP for Windows which looks like the above image. Please upgrade as soon as possible. Feel free to contact us at support@zetetic.net should you have any questions.

Google has just published a serious new web vulnerability, POODLE, affecting SSL 3.0. Because this flaw that can leak data, and compromise user and system security, we have disabled SSL 3.0 for our sites and services, including zetetic.net and Tempo. Unfortunately there is no other viable workaround at this time.

Please note that this should not affect the vast majority of users running on modern supported browsers, however IE 6 on Windows XP will no longer be able to connect to these sites. Please feel free to contact us if you have an questions or concerns.

As noted on our community discussion site, there’s an update to STRIP for iPhone and STRIP for iPad out today in the iTunes App Store that addresses a couple of recent issues. Version 2.4.2 should start showing up in the iTunes App Store soon if you don’t see it just yet.

The latest release of SQLCipher, version 3.2.0 which is based on the stable upstream release of SQLite 3.8.6 is now available. With this release, we would like to highlight a few specific changes that were introduced. First, a new PRAGMA, cipher_store_pass which allows for the source passphrase to be stored in RAM, even after key derivation. Typically the source passphrase is zeroed from memory once a key is computed. Now, if PRAGMA cipher_store_pass is set, operations such as an ATTACH database command will used the passphrase stored in memory, thus the requirement to provide a KEY value are not needed unless a different value is required for the key. Note, PRAGMA cipher_store_pass is disabled by default and the memory is locked when supported on the given platform to prevent the memory from being paged into a swap file. When PRAGMA cipher_store_pass is enabled, the stored passphrase is wiped when the database is closed.

In this release we are happy to announce commercial support of SQLCipher on Windows Phone 8.1. Finally, we have included a fix to the Common Crypto provider in which key derivation was occurring twice, this should reduce the first operation requiring KDF by 50%. SQLCipher for Android has been validaed on Android platforms 2.1 through Android L preview. Commercial builds for all supported platforms are available immediately. We are aware of the forthcoming SQLite 3.8.7 release, which promises to be up to 50% faster. We are planning to incorporate 3.8.7 in a follow-up release once it has been released and stabilized. We look forward to hearing your feedback with the latest release, please get in contact!