Data encryption and Ubuntu, Part I

Hamish Taylor
Friday, 21 November 2008 06:37

Opinion and Analysis

With Ubuntu 8.10, you have the ability to create an Private encrypted folder and store files in it. The folder is opened (mounted) when you log in and closed (unmounted) when you log out. A word of caution: if you Hibernate or Standby the folder is left open, therefore if someone has your username and password combination they can log in and get to the data in the Private folder.

To create this folder you do have to use the dreaded Command Line Interface!!!

Go to Applications, Accessories, Terminal and type in the following (without the quotation marks; I just use them to let you know the exact command): "sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils". Hit Enter. You'll be asked for your password, and the installer will go off and download and install some files. When that's done, type in "ecryptfs-setup-private" and hit Enter. You'll be asked for a mount password, then it will give you some random messages and after that you'll have a Private folder in your Home folder (/home/<your_user_name>/Private/).

If you open up the Private folder, you'll see a file with a really long silly name. To get rid of it, just log off and log back in again (or type in "sudo mount.ecrypt_private" into the Terminal).

That's it! You now have an area where you can securely store data. What this means is that if someone ever gets hold of your machine, takes the hard drive out and looks at it using another machine or boots up your machine with a LiveCD, then they will not be able to see any data in that Private folder; it will all be gibberish. (Of course, if they have your username and password, then it's game over and they have access to everything. That's why ultimately everything always comes down to the strength of the passwords you use.)

In the next article, I'll be looking at GPG/PGP and how to use it to send encrypted email to people. I found this really useful when working in China on an international project. I was getting things such as Administrator passwords and VPN keys from the Netherlands via encrypted emails.

As always, please leave feedback, comments and questions. However, I will only respond to comments left on iTWire article discussion forums. The direct link for this article is here.