Abstract: A connector with a flexible arrangement for attaching one or more small or mid-sized bags is described. The connector provides a shoulder strap or handle that allows the user to conveniently carry the assemblage. The connector may include slotted top and bottom rails vertically displaced from each other, where mounting tabs on the small bags may be threaded through the slots to attach a bag to the connector. Slotted sheets of material may be placed between a top and bottom rail, or the entire connector may be made of one or more sheets of fabric or other flexible material. Again the mounting tabs may be threaded through the slots to secure the bags. The vertical edges of the sheets may be folded and sewn of bonded to better form supports for the connector, and combinations of rails, vertical supports and sheets of fabric of other such materials may be used.

Abstract: Plaintext elements and masking array elements are converted into digits in another number base. The resulting digits are combined modulo the new number base and the result is converted back into elements using the original number base resulting in ciphertext elements. For recovery of the plaintext, the ciphertext elements and masking array elements are converted again into digits in the same number base as used for encryption and a reverse arithmetic combination of these digits is employed, modulo the new number base, and the result of the combination is converted back into elements in the original number base resulting in the original plaintext elements.

Abstract: Apparatus and method for encrypting and decrypting using permutation, concatenation and decatenation together with rotation and arithmetic and logic combining with elements or digits or characters from random, pseudo-random, or arbitrary sources wherein the plaintext may be partitioned, block-by-block, the block size being a user selectable power of 2 in size. The data bytes in the input block are selected M bytes at a time, where M.gtoreq.2, with permuted addressing to form a single concatenated data byte, CDB. The CDB is modified by rotating (or barrel shifting) a random bit distance. The CDB may also be modified before or after rotation by simple arithmetic/logic operations. After modification, the CDB is broken up into M bytes and each of the M bytes is placed into the output block with permuted addressing. The output block, or ciphertext, may again be used as an input block and the process repeated with a new output block.

Abstract: An encryption/decryption apparatus that provides at least two masks, each of which is used in logic/mathematic operation with information to be encrypted to preserve confidentiality. The operations include exclusive oring, addition, subtraction. The source of the masks can be any commonly found data, for example, the code of a music CD. In such a manner the sender may tell the receiver in private that the masks are from a particular track on a particular CD, sampled in a particular fashion, using a particular password. The product of the number of elements in each mask need not be greater or equal to the number of elements in the data file being encrypted. Repetition may make the decoding easier for an eavesdropper, but the use of a password character array to control the use and sequencing of each set of encoding mask operations greatly helps in maintaining the confidentiality of the data. The present invention includes use as a one-time-pad and can be implemented on personal computers.