Questions about encryption such as home folder encryption, partition encryption and file encryption.
49
votes
4answers
10k views
When installing I'm given the option of encrypting my home folder — what does this do?
Does encrypting my home folder make my computer more secure?
Do I have to enter my password more if my home folder is encrypted?
What else should I know about encrypting my home folder?
48
votes
3answers
13k views
How to stop using built-in home directory encryption?
I have a new Ubuntu 10.04 installation with encrypted home directory (using the built-in encryption offered by Ubuntu installer).
What's the easiest way to stop using encryption? (I.e., to decrypt ...
25
votes
6answers
19k views
Is there a way to password protect individual folders?
Let's say that I have a folder, within my Documents folder, that has files I want no one to access without a password.
Is there a way to lock down that folder so that it's password protected / ...
21
votes
4answers
13k views
How do I quickly encrypt a file with AES?
I want to encrypt a file using AES-256. How can I do that quickly and easily, and how can I - or someone else -decrypt it again?
20
votes
8answers
7k views
How can I encrypt data in Ubuntu One?
I'd love to use Ubuntu One features, like file storage and so on, but I don't want anyone else to access my data, USA Patriot act etc.. Things shall be encrypted so that the only place where info is ...
19
votes
4answers
391 views
Is there a tool that can add a password to a PDF file?
I've found lots of info on decrypting PDF files, but none on encrypting them. What tool can do this for me?
Edit: There are two good answers below, but in my specific case the PDF was a scan, not a ...
17
votes
3answers
4k views
What is the performance overhead of encrypted /home?
I have a netbook with Windows on the second partition and Xubuntu (/ and /home) on the third partition. I selected to encrypt my home folder during installation. The performance of the netbook is ...
13
votes
6answers
5k views
13
votes
3answers
2k views
Reinstall Ubuntu with encrypted home directory?
I have Ubuntu 10.04 installed with encrypted home directory. /home is on a aseparate partition. Can I just boot from 10.10 cd, reformat '/' and install as usual? I think it should work if I use the ...
13
votes
4answers
4k views
Ubuntu One Encryption?
I have two questions...
Firstly, is the communication between my Ubuntu desktop and the Ubuntu One cloud encrypted?
Secondly, are the files, media etc. stored on my Ubuntu one account encrypted on ...
13
votes
1answer
4k views
New encryption feature in Ubuntu 12.10: home encryption or full disk encryption? or both?
How do I correctly encrypt the entire partition when installing Ubuntu 12.10? I ask because the new Ubuntu installer now shows two encryption options.
After choosing "Encrypt the new Ubuntu ...
12
votes
4answers
3k views
How can I do individual file encryption on Dropbox?
I'd like to set a single directory inside Dropbox in which files are encrypted on a file-by-file basis.
At the moment, I use a 2Mb Truecrypt container inside my Dropbox which I then have to mount ...
12
votes
2answers
2k views
Encrypt home drive after installation
I declined to encrypt to my home drive whilst installing ubuntu.
Is it possible to encrypt it after installation?
if so, how?
11
votes
3answers
1k views
Is the swap partition encrypted?
Selecting the encryption option at install time to encrypt the home partition. Does this enable encryption of the swap partition or is the swap partition unencrypted. If the swap partition is ...
11
votes
2answers
1k views
How do I recover data from an encrypted Home directory
I opted to encrypt my Home during install, and now I would like to access my data from a LiveCD, unfortunately I'm having trouble following these instructions. I get the error "mounting eCryptfs: [-2] ...
10
votes
9answers
591 views
What's the best way to store a passphrase?
I've recently enabled Ubuntu's encrypted /home/ directory features and I was asked to remember a passphrase in case I would need to recover the data manually.
What is the best way to store this ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
How can I determine if just the .private folder is encrypted or the whole home directory?
How can i determine if just the .private folder is encrypted or the whole home directory?
9
votes
1answer
2k views
Will changing password re-encrypt my home directory?
I need to change my user password. Do I need to take any extra steps for my encrypted home directory to become inaccessible with my old password and only accessible with my new password?
9
votes
3answers
1k views
Where do applications typically store data?
I was wondering if there was a standard location for storing user level application data. What I mean by that is stuff like Firefox bookmarks, Skype message history/password, etc. I'm asking because I ...
9
votes
1answer
251 views
Where are decrypted files stored during runtime?
I wonder where does Ubuntu/eCryptfs store decrypted files from encrypted $HOME directory during runtime.
Does it decrypt files just-in-time and store them only in RAM?
What about large files (e.g. ...
9
votes
1answer
219 views
9
votes
1answer
10k views
Can you unencrypt / remove encryption from a user home folder? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How to stop using built-in home directory encryption?
During installation I have chosen to encrypt my user's home folder.
Can I un-encrypt it? How would I do that? I ...
9
votes
2answers
3k views
How can I disable Hibernate completely in Kubuntu?
I have seen the answer on How to disable hibernating?, but I have no such file. Possibly because that suggestion was written for Ubuntu, not Kubuntu (KDE, not Gnome).
I do not have a swap on my ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
use ecryptfs for Ubuntu One with an already encrypted home directory
I'd like the idea of having one encrypted folder on Ubuntu One. There are current howtos in the Internet how to set it up with EncFS or ecryptfs. I'd like to use ecryptfs - not because of speed as ...
9
votes
0answers
1k views
How do I disable the Home encryption offered during install? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How to stop using built-in home directory encryption?
During install I ticked the box to enable encryption for my Home directory. I'm concerned that it is effecting ...
8
votes
3answers
6k views
Create encrypted (password protected) zip file
How do I create an encrypted (password protected) zip file?
8
votes
2answers
984 views
Which algorithm does “encrypt home directory” use?
When encrypting a user's home directory, either during the install procedure or later using ecryptfs-migrate-home, what encryption algorithm / key size is used by default?
8
votes
1answer
470 views
Why does an encrypted folder totally fill my /home/ folder?
When I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop from the CD, I choose for encrypting my home folder. Just after, I copied a lot of files to ~, but that copying might not have worked.
Since then my ...
8
votes
1answer
2k views
How do I encrypt my home partition?
With Ubuntu 9.10 I did not have any encrypted partitions set up, I have since installed a fresh Ubuntu 10.04.
I have 3 partitions: OS root (/), home and swap. How do I enable encryption on my ...
8
votes
1answer
2k views
How can one unlock a fully encrypted Ubuntu 11.10 system over SSH at boot?
In previous versions of Ubuntu, and current versions of Debian, you can unlock a fully encrypted system (using dmcrypt and LUKS) at boot time over SSH.
It was as easy as:
Installing the encrypted ...
7
votes
8answers
4k views
How to create an encrypted partition?
well i'm trying to create an encrypted partition and while i formated it i got the option
to choose the partition type (fat/ext2/ext3/ext4/xfs/reiserfs/minix/ntfs) is there any benefit of choosing one ...
7
votes
4answers
2k views
How can I read every DVD, even if encrypted by CSS or other?
I sometimes want to use my computer as a DVD-player. Unfortunately I know that I will often have to cope with encrypted DVDs, for example with CSS.
Therefore I installed the libdvdcss2 library from ...
7
votes
2answers
748 views
How to use https with apt-get?
Does apt-get use https or any kind of encryption? Is there a way to configure it to use it?
7
votes
1answer
364 views
Does the system suffer in performance because of full-disk encryption?
I have a netbook that uses an SSD (Corsair Force 3 SSD (5.02)). When installing Ubuntu on it I chose an encrypted file system with EXT4. My question is: Does the file system suffer any performance ...
7
votes
2answers
3k views
How to check if your home folder and swap partition are encrypted using terminal?
I installed Ubuntu 12.04 a few days ago but strangely I seem to have skipped the part about choosing to encrypt home folder. Now if it is encrypted I do not know what is the encryption key. How do I ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
Encrypted Home… Forgotten Password, but no Passphrase
I am using a cloned hard drive in attempts to restore some old files.
The cloned drive has 2 users, one with an encrypted home drive, one without. Both are administrators. When I couldn't get into ...
7
votes
1answer
2k views
Are there any known vulnerabilities to Ubuntu's full disk encryption feature?
Are there any known vulnerabilities to Ubuntu's full disk encryption feature?
I have some storage devices (thumbdrive and a few external hard drives used for backups) that I use with full disk ...
7
votes
2answers
767 views
If I encrypt my home folder during installation, can I do another clean installation over the entire hard drive?
Let's say I install Ubuntu 10.10 with an encrypted folder or hard drive, and I plan on doing a clean install of Ubuntu 11.04. Will the encryption cause an issue? Or will it still be as simple as ...
7
votes
3answers
1k views
using locate on an encrypted partition
I selected /home/ to be encrypted when I was installing Ubuntu. Now, is it possible to make locate work with an encrypted partition like this?
7
votes
4answers
3k views
Why doesn't Cryptkeeper work in 12.04?
I recently asked this question about how to encrypt software on my machine. One of the answers suggested Cryptkeeper, so I installed it from Ubuntu software centre. The installation proceeded without ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
How can I encrypt the entire disk on alternate installation?
Is it possible to install Ubuntu 11.04 with full disk encryption?
Previously versions have had an alternate install cd with a text interface where you could enable encryption for your drives.
This ...
7
votes
2answers
6k views
Mount a LUKS partition at boot
I have installed an Ubuntu machine with two encrypted LUKS partitions: one for / and one for /home.
I've reinstalled the machine to upgrade to 10.04. Again, the / is installed using LUKS, and I'm ...
7
votes
1answer
246 views
Recover encrypted data after reinstall
I couldn't remember the password that I've used for so many weeks, and changed it in recovery mode but for many reasons I decided to reinstall Ubuntu 12.10 with my seperate /home folder intact and ...
6
votes
3answers
2k views
Securely automount encrypted drive at user login
An encrypted /home directory gets mounted automatically for me when I log in. I have a second internal hard drive that I've formatted and encrypted with Disk Utility. I want it to be automatically ...
6
votes
3answers
744 views
Connecting to WPA2 network from console
How can I connect to a WPA2 Encrypted Network from the Terminal/Console?
I've wanted to remove the whole x-window system and use a Terminal based system only to free up any available memory and ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
Is encrypting the home directory on an encrypted LVM installation overkill?
I am installing from the alternate CD and using the LVM encrypted hard drive.
The installer is now asking if I want to encrypt my home directory, is this overkill?
6
votes
4answers
3k views
Mount encrypted volumes from command line?
If I have an encrypted external disk (or an internal disk that is not in fstab), I see an entry for it in Nautilus -- with an entry like "X GB Encrypted Volume". I can click on this volume, and am ...
6
votes
1answer
2k views
Kubuntu 11.04 + Windows 7 dual boot laptop drive encryption
I already know how to create a Kubuntu/Win7 dual boot. What I would like to do is to encrypt both operating systems.
I use Kubuntu as my main OS, and Windows 7 for casual gaming or prolonged Visual ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
How do you encrypt and decrypt files using your keychain?
Remember this little guy over here?
He's no longer with us in Ubuntu 11.10. Now, a friend's sent me an encrypted file using a public key I think I have the key fore in my keychain. How can I ...
6
votes
1answer
568 views
Auto-mounting an encrypted USB hard drive
How can you configure a headless Ubuntu server to auto-mount an encrypted USB hard drive?
I found this similar question, which explains how to mount the drive from the command line, but the author is ...
