How secure is the "encryption" in PowerQuest Drive Image?

From: John M. Dlugosz (john_at_dlugosz.com)
Date: 04/28/03 

Date: 28 Apr 2003 14:22:52 -0700

There is an option to supply a password when making a backup using
PowerQuest Drive Image. But it begs the question, how well does it
work? I could certainly encrypt the resulting files using a regular
file encryption tool, but that would complicate restoring a system
from a set of CD's since they would have to be decrypted first.

Does anybody know if the built-in mechanism is worth using under any
conditions, for any level of protection? Or is it as trivial to break
as passwords on ZIP files or Word documents?

I'd be interested in knowing what PQDI does when it "encrypts", and
how large is the key etc.

I suspect that it can be brute-force cracked simply because people use
short passwords. But even if the user interface requires a small
field and it's case-smashed, one could use a random letter sequence
and still get a good many bits of protection in a short input.

--John

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