This module modifies the last four bits of an NTFS timestamp to hide information. Data entered is encrypted with AES.

Note: The cryptography settings used in this demo aren't production-ready. They were mostly chosen to still fit the data into the timestamp bits. Do not rely on this for anything.

Get the latest version with pip install datemangler.

This program requires the xattr package to function which will only install if the development files for libffi are installed. Use sudo apt-get install libffi-dev on Debian/Ubuntu before installing xattr or this package.

The datemangler module has been tested with Python 3.11.

The module comes with a script entrypoint which you can see in use in test.sh. A Dockerfile has been included in this repository to enable testing on other platforms as well. Note that the container needs to be run with --privileged since it needs to mount a dummy NTFS volume.

By default, it will run the tests of this project:

$ docker run --privileged --rm -it foo 
Initializing device with zeroes: 100% - Done.
Creating NTFS volume structures.
mkntfs completed successfully. Have a nice day.
..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.798s

OK

If you run it with --entrypoint ./test.sh, you will get an interactive shell to play around with:

$ docker run --privileged --entrypoint ./test.sh --rm -it foo
Initializing device with zeroes: 100% - Done.
Creating NTFS volume structures.
mkntfs completed successfully. Have a nice day.

root@dedb7779c2e8:/app/test# datemangler
usage: datemangler [-h] [-R] [-i INPUT] [-l PAYLOAD_LENGTH] {read,write} path

root@dedb7779c2e8:/app/test# datemangler -i "Hello my friend!" write .
Payload length was 16

root@dedb7779c2e8:/app/test# datemangler -l 16 read .
Hello my friend!

root@6b72ecc409c7:/app/test/test# datemangler -i foo write 0
root@6b72ecc409c7:/app/test/test# datemangler read 0
foo