Comments on: What's the best software for encryption?

Question: What's the best software for encryption?

turbanhead — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:45:15 -0800

What is the best software program for encrypting certain folders on an external hard drive.

I have a new 300GB drive and want to encrypt only certain files and folders.

By: unixrat

unixrat — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:52:24 -0800

What sort of OS will you be using this with or does it have to be platform neutral?

By: TheRaven

TheRaven — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:56:05 -0800

The Mac's own File Vault works very well.

By: TheFeatheredMullet

TheFeatheredMullet — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:57:25 -0800

PGP

By: gwenzel

gwenzel — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:11:00 -0800

TrueCrypt works well for this kind of thing, if you're in a PC environment.

By: gwenzel

gwenzel — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:11:36 -0800

Clarification: By "PC" I mean "Windows or Linux".

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:49:33 -0800

you may be aware of this, but i believe that laws are starting to be passed that make it illegal not to reveal keys to encrypted data. if this concerns you, you may want to use deniable encryption. in that case, i would recommend truecrypt and add that you should read the instructions very carefully.

i have used truecrypt myself and it has not given me any problems. however, i encrypt whole partitions and haven't used the deniable encryption part (of course, i would say that anyway... :o) and haven't checked the code or tested it in any way.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:50:31 -0800

arrgh. got my terms mixed up. you want plausible deniability. sorry.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:52:20 -0800

bleagh. i give up. the info is in teh first link, but the correct name is the second. afaik. basically - there are nested keys and no-one can prove when you have given them all.

By: patr1ck

patr1ck — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:22:10 -0800

GPG

From their website:

GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC2440 . GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communcation, features a versatile key managment system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries are available.

Free and open software for the win.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:44:13 -0800

Windows does have a transperant encryption engine built in, that lets you encrypt certan folders on the fly, in a way that lets every program run and access the data.

It's a little risky though, because if you lose your certificates (like if your windows install gets hosed), then you won't be able to ever recover the data. In Windows XP Just highlight a folder, and hit ALT+ENTER, then ALT+D then ALT+E to enable encryption on that folder (then hit ENTER, and ENTER again). When you're not logged into the machine as yourself no one will be able to read the files (in theory)

By: mendel

mendel — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:09:08 -0800

GPG won't let you encrypt folders and access them transparently, though. You'll have to encrypt and decrypt individual files on demand. (Unless there's some extension thingy I don't know about.)

By: Mikey-San

Mikey-San — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 02:37:51 -0800

For reference, since someone mentioned FileVault in Mac OS X:

If you just need to encrypt a few folders, a regular encrypted disk image will do just fine. No need to encrypt your entire home directory. AES-128 images make great little data strongboxes. :-)