A nice security program encfs

General system Applications
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Hello my friends!

Yesterday I found a nice little program, haven’t tested it fully but it’s a good finding.
Package name is encfs is used to create an encrypted folder that you can easilly mount and unmount using a password.

It’s super easy to manage requiring only to create a folder at first usage
mkdir ~/.crypt ~/crypt

and running
encfs ~/.crypt ~/crypt
if the above is a first time you’ll be asked to type a password.

and to unmount use
fusermount -u ~/crypt

If you are interested on testing remember to install the package encfs :crazy_face:
Here are some interesting material
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EncFS
http://sdf.org/?tutorials/encfs_tutorial

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Hello @fernandomaroto
Hope you are doing well. It’s been a while. So this is for an encrypted folder?

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Thanks for sharing!

Here you go:

:sandwich:

Bom apetite!

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I’m good, how about you?
Yes, I usually saved some text files using libreoffice as .doc files in order to have a password and protect them, with encfs is easier.

hahaha thanks!

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Thank you for this, gpg is hard to remember (though fun!)

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Once you create an encrypted folder and use it and you want to remove it can you just delete it or do you have to un-encrypt it first?

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I may misinterpret what you actually mean by “want to remove”.

The “real” files and folders will be encrypted (e. g. ~/.crypt). Upon mounting with your password, encfs just creates a virtual unencrypted state you can interact with like any other file/folder (read, write, delete, …).
In @fernandomaroto’s example the unencrypted files/folders would be in ~/crypt.

Once unmounted, ~/crypt should be empty and can be removed.

You can unencrypt files/folders by simply copying them from ~/crypt to a different location.

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There is also gocryptfs.

And a nice gui wrapper

:wink:

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Maybe I’m not understanding how it works? The folder is encrypted? Or it just encrypts any contents? I was just thinking that if the actual folder was encrypted not the contents then you can’t access it without password? So i was thinking if you want to remove it if that’s the case can you just delete it or some other method to remove. If its only the contents that are encrypted can you also delete any file inside?

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Each single file is encrypted.

E.g. you initialize an encrypted folder on an USB stick and mount it somewhere. When you throw files in the mounted folder they are encrypted and stored in you crypted folder (e.g. on your usb stick)

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I see them going in but how do you know which file it is? The name is different? :thinking:

Edit: So those you are dragging in are actually going inside the Finance folder? I just see different names on the right.

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The ones on the right are the encrypted ones (filenames are encrypted too)

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So how do you know what to open if you don’t know what it is? If i want to open the letter.odt for instance?

Edit: Guess I’ll have to see it in action later.

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  1. Create an encrypted folder
    gocryptfs -init /usb-stick/my-encrypted-stuff
    It’ll ask you for a password to encrypt files and store a config file in /usb-stick/my-encrypted-stuff

  2. Mount the encrypted folder
    gocryptfs /usb-stick/my-encrypted-stuff /home/moson/plain
    It’ll ask for the password here.

Place your super-confidential files into /home/moson/plain
They get encrypted on-the-fly and end up in /usb-stick/my-encrypted-stuff…

Now take your USB stick, loose it somewhere and be happy that no one can decrypt your files (If you chose a proper password :wink:)

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You don’t need to play with ~/.crypt
add or remove files from ~/crypt directly, when you unmount the files will disappear, when you mount (using a password) your files will reappear

Yep, take a look when you have time, it’s an interesting tool.

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That is just an awful advice. :laughing:

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Wow, really pleased to hear from you.
Glad to hear you are doing well.

Pudge

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