Old Evernote encryption RC2 is not supported

[MichaelHeydukFraba]

I have very old encrypted notes in my evernote, which are encrypted with RC2. That was the dfault cipher since about 2014 I guess.
Is it possible, to also support decrypting those encrypted texts?! Thanks a lot!

[basnappl]

@MichaelHeydukFraba, did you ever figure out a way to decrypt the old RC2 encrypted content?

[MichaelHeydukFraba]

No, not yet unfortunately. But I didn't invest much time.

[basnappl]

@MichaelHeydukFraba, I figured it out. You can use nixnote2: https://github.com/robert7/nixnote2 (note that you must have java runtime installed for it to work). Nixnote2 can't decode the newer AES encrypted data, but it can decrypt the older RC2 stuff. So, you will need to import your exported *.enex into Nixnote2.

Alternatively, if you look at the code for nixnote2, here are the relevant lines for the flow for RC2 decryption:

1. https://github.com/robert7/nixnote2/blob/master/src/utilities/encrypt.cpp#L43
2. https://github.com/robert7/nixnote2/blob/master/src/utilities/encrypt.cpp#L63

Nixnote2 is running this java program to do the decryption: https://github.com/robert7/nixnote2/raw/refs/heads/master/java/crypto.jar

So, rather than install nixnote2, you could just download crypto.jar and (assuming you have java installed), run: java -jar ./crypto.jar decrypt-rc2 passphrase 64 ciphertext from the terminal (replacing "passphrase" with your passphrase and "ciphertext" with the Evernote ciphertext).

Hope that helps!

[MichaelHeydukFraba]

Very cool! Many thanks!!!! Right now I don't need it - but I will maybe test it later...

[basnappl]

OK, great. I have tested it on my old Evernote data and both methods (nixnote2 and just running crypto.jar directly) work for me!