English
Italianoencrypted filesystem in userspace
I was looking for a quick way to encrypt some documents on my laptop.
pgp was not an option, as I
didn't want to deal with encrypted files one by one.
encfs turns out to be a good solution.
encfs provides an encrypted filesystem in user space, which means you don't need to encrypt a full partition, but rather you can create an encrypted filesystem on the fly.
Creating an encfs filesystem
$ mkdir /home/adotti/.work /home/adotti/work
$ encfs /home/adotti/.work /home/adotti/work
Creating new encrypted volume.
Please choose from one of the following options:
enter "x" for expert configuration mode,
enter "p" for pre-configured paranoia mode,
anything else, or an empty line will select standard mode.
Pre-configured paranoia mode was enough for my needs, so I simply typed
p.
Paranoia configuration selected.
Configuration finished. The filesystem to be created has
the following properties:
Filesystem cipher: "ssl/aes", version 2:1:1
Filename encoding: "nameio/block", version 3:0:1
Key Size: 256 bits
Block Size: 512 bytes, including 8 byte MAC header
Each file contains 8 byte header with unique IV data.
Filenames encoded using IV chaining mode.
File data IV is chained to filename IV.
New Encfs Password:
Verify Encfs Password:
Using the encrypted filesystem
At this point my new encrypted filesystem is ready to be used:
$ encfs /home/adotti/.work /home/adotti/work
EncFS Password:
Note that while files are encrypted, files metadata are not. Size, permissions and the number of files remain visible.
