Manjaro Encfs

Encfs

From Manjaro
Revision as of 13:42, 8 June 2014 by imported>Viking60 (→‎First time run)

Introduction

Encfs is an encryption program that is suitable for encrypting content on an already installed system. It can be used for encrypting your /home or you can make smaller private directories that can hold your encrypted data. You can encrypt Dropbox with it and that has the advantage over Truecrypt that is does not require reserved valuable space that Truecrypt does (as of 05 2014 Truecrypt is considered unsafe]).

Encfs does not reserve a space on your HD and simply grows and shrinks with the files you put in there.

The one thing that can seem a bit confusing about it is that you need to make two directories (folders) to make it work: one encrypted and one un-encrypted.

Why would we need an un-encrypted folder that contains the data we want to encrypt; is that not the mother of all security flaws?

The entire point with encryption is that the encrypted data should not be accessible in an un-encrypted form; right?

The way Encfs works is that the un-encrypted directory is the mount point for the encrypted content.

If you do not mount it nothing will be visible. And to mount it; you need to enter a given password.

Installing

Encfs is in the community repo so you can simply install it with

sudo pacman -S encfs 

or use Pamac or Octopi.


Using it - encrypting

We want to make a directory that we would call

.secret

to keep our encrypted stuff, and we would make the mount point

secret

To achieve this, we run the following command in a terminal:

encfs ~/.secret ~/secret

First time run

This will create the hidden directory .secret and the mount point secret the first time you run it. You need to use the full path. During first time run you will also be prompted for the encryption mode; x for expert or p for paranoia mode. We will pick p which is a good mode.

Next you will be prompted for your password. Make it long and hard to crack but don't forget it - if you do; there is no way of recovering your data.


Tip
use sentences and slang like; Ain'tToHappyBoutNSATheseDays062014

Confirm the password and that's it you are finished.

File:Encfs4.png

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