Notebook PEA is an open source password-encryption tool with a built-in text editor, that handles texts in Rich Text Format. The program provides editing functions like cut, copy, paste, undo, redo and some styling functionality and supports Nextcloud, Owncloud and other providers that support the WebDAV protocol. Thanks to the embedded editor, the unencrypted text must be never stored on the hard disk, instead it is kept only in the random access memory (RAM). Even if the computer crashes, the confidentiality of the texts is not at risk. Several texts can be managed at the same time, not displaying texts remain encrypted in RAM. The authenticated encryption mode (EAX) achieves both confidentiality and integrity of the text. The most serious weakness of password encryption programs, the vulnerability to custom-hardware attacks are countered by the memory-hard key derivation function Catena-Dragonfly.
There are other options for the key derivation function: Scrypt, Catena-Butterfly, Bcrypt and Pomelo. The default cipher is Threefish, the default hash function is Blake2b, but other algorithms are available such as the ciphers AES and Twofish and the hash functions SHA-512 and Skein. The program provides a virtual keyboard to protect against key loggers, a proactive password-strength meter to give feedback while typing a new password, tables of characters to enlarge the character set and an internal pool of entropy to improve the random number generator. Notebook PEA requires the Java Runtime Environment that is already installed on most systems. No further installation is required. Notebook PEA is a Password Encrypting Archive (PEA), produced by the PeaFactory: It is small (about 250 KiB), round (standalone application) and green.
