All that needs to be done is to drag and drop a file into the application window to encrypt or decrypt files. A password prompt is displayed if you drag and drop an unencrypted file into the program interface. This password along with an internal algorithm is used to encrypt the file, so that only users with the password can decrypt it to access its contents. Encoding Decoding displays the password strength of the selected password directly in the program interface which can act as a guideline for users who want to make sure they select a secure password.

Please note that the original file will remain on the system. If you do not want that, you need to delete it manually as there is no option to delete the original file automatically after a successful encryption. Check out securely delete files if you want to delete the file so that it cannot be recovered anymore.

The decryption works in exactly the same way. Drag and drop an encrypted file into the program interface and enter the correct password to decrypt the file. The file is then saved to the same directory the encrypted file is stored in.

Users who do not want to drag and drop files into the interface can alternatively click in the program window to open the file browser. The program supports three different encoding algorithms which are unfortunately not explained in the program window, help file or the developer page.

Windows users interested in the program can download it from the developer website. It is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system.

It takes time if you have never created an encrypted container before, and even if you did, you need to follow the same creation process.

The free software TruPax offers an alternative. It can create TrueCrypt containers, without TrueCrypt or admin rights.

It has been primarily designed to offer “a convenient way to transfer arbitrary numbers of files and directories into a new volume file”. Even better: The size of the encrypted container is the size of all files added by the user plus a little overhead.

The encrypted containers are TrueCrypt containers, and therefor readable by the popular file encryption software. TruPax basically is a software that eliminates all the problems and difficulties associated with creating a TrueCrypt container file.

The Java application is available as a portable version and installer for Windows, and a version for Linux.

Files and folders can be added by dragging and dropping them into the program window, or by using the Add Files and Add Folder buttons.

All files and folders are displayed with their name, size and date. Status information in the footer list the total amount of files and folders, their data size and the required size of the volume.

A click on Make Volume opens a file browser in which the location and name of the encrypted container need to be selected.

There is no option to open an existing TrueCrypt container, only the possibility to overwrite the contents with the new data. The master password for the encrypted data is selected in the last and final step.

The encrypted container can be mounted at anytime with TrueCrypt.

TruPax offers no options to change the block cipher or hash function at this point in development. It uses AES256 as the block cipher, and RIPEMD-160 as the hash function, with the promise to add additional options in future versions.

Commands can also be issued via the command line. This is detailed in the documentation. Every option in the interface has a corresponding command for the command line.

TruPax features

• creates file containers in the open UDF format, mountable on many modern operating systems.
• created containers are writable on the more recent systems (Windows 7, OSX, Linux).
• runs on any operating system where the Java™ 6 runtime is available.
• is a completely new implementation of the TrueCrypt encryption technology.
• uses all processor cores to do its job as fast as possible.
• writes container files in just one pass. No seeking.
• is free to use. No charges. No spyware either.
• source code is available for review. No hiding.

Verdict

TruPax offers interesting options for users who need to encrypt data. Its main advantages are that it can create TrueCrypt compatible containers without admin rights, and without TrueCrypt present on the system. Ideal for systems where important data needs to be moved and TrueCrypt is not available.

TruPax download and compatibility

TruPax is available for Linux and Windows. The program requires the Java Runtime Environment, and offers both a graphical user interface and command line options. Downloads for all supported versions are available at the developer website. (via)

In this article I am going to show you more than one way to do this: Using permissions, using zip, and using encryption. Hopefully, in the end, you will have a method that suits your needs and your abilities.

The tools

Most likely you already have all of the tools you need installed. There could be a slight chance that gpg is not installed. To find out issue the command which gpg. This command should return the version of gpg you have installed. You should also know (as if you don’t already know) that these tasks will all be completed from the command line. So open up your favorite terminal and get ready to type.

Permissions

Since we’re talking about Linux, keeping other users from seeing your files/folders is actually quite simple. All you need to do is make sure the read permissions for other and group are not set. So let’s say you create a folder in your home directory called ~/TEST. By default the permissions on that folder will be:

drwxr-xr-x

This means that anyone in your group and all others can read and execute from within that directory. Let’s remove those permissions. To do so issue the command:

chmod -R go-rx TEST

Now the only user that can read, write, or execute from within your TEST directory is you. There is one problem with that – the root user will still have access to that folder. Or anyone with your user password for that matter. So let’s take this one step further.

Zip

You may not have known this, but you can encrypt a zipped file. Let’s say you don’t want any user on the system seeing the contents of that particular folder. To do that with the zip command is easy. The only issue with this is the folder will now be in zipped form and the only way for you to view the contents is to unzip it. That’s simple to do as well. But let’s zip and encrypt using the same folder ~/TEST. To zip and encrypt this folder you would issue the command:

zip -e -r TEST TEST

You will be prompted for a password for the encryption. The above command would complete with an encrypted TEST.zip file and leave the TEST folder behind. You would then want to delete that folder so no one could see the contents. To unzip that same folder issue the command:

unzip TEST

You will then be prompted for the same password you gave for the encryption. Once you successfully enter the password the file will be unzipped.

Nautilus

There is a very simple way to encrypt files from within the Nautilus file manager. To do this you will need to install the following:

• seahorse
• seahorse-plugins

Seahorse is an encryption front-end for the GNOME desktop. More than likely seahorse is already installed, but seahorse is not. To install seahorse-plugins open up your Add/Remove Software tool, search for “seahorse” (no quotes), mark both for installation (if seahorse is already installed only mark seahorse-plugins), and click Apply to install.

Once this is install you will need to log out and log back in to apply the changes to Nautilus. After you have logged back in open up Nautilus and right click on a file or folder. You should now see, in the action menu, an entry for Encryption. You can either encrypt a single file or folder. You will, of course, have to already have created your gpg key in order to do this. But don’t worry, you can create your gpg key from within Seahorse. Upon encrypting a file or folder, the only people that can  see the contents of that file or folder will be those with your encryption key.

Final thoughts

There are so many ways to protect your files/folders in Linux. Some of the above methods are much more secure than others, but each method will get you to where you want to be – safe.

True Crypt is an Open-Source software that can be used to create encrypted containers on devices. One of the major advantages of True Crypt is that it can be used as a portable application which means that you can copy the True Crypt files on the USB device so that the software does not have to be installed on the computer system where the data is needed.

There is however the requirement that the user who wants to mount the True Crypt volume to get access to the data needs to have administrative rights to run the software. That is however the only requirement.

Download the True Crypt software and run the setup. The setup displays options to install or extract the contents. Choose the extract option and pick the USB device as the target. All the files needed to encrypt and decrypt data will be extracted to the USB device.

Run truecrypt.exe afterwards. We need to create an encrypted container on the USB device that can store the data that we want to protect. It is limited to the free space on the USB device.

Click on Create Volume in the main interface and select the option to create an encrypted file container. Use the standard volume type in the next screen. Now browse to the USB device and pick a random filename that should be used as the container. You can use any name or extension, it does not really matter, for example test.avi, test.txt or bigrar.rar.

Pick an encryption algorithm (AES is fine and fast) and a Hash Algorithm (SJA-512) and define the space on the device that you want to assign. Select a password (20+ chars are recommended, the more the securer). The volume (in this case the space that you have selected) will be formatted. Move the mouse around to create random information and click the format button in the end.

This completes the creation of the encrypted container on the device. You need to mount it whenever you are going to use it. This is done by executing True Crypt from the USB device, picking a drive letter and selecting the file that contains the encrypted container.

The last step would be to click on mount to enter the password that is needed for the data decryption.

The data will be secure whenever the container is not mounted on the computer system. That’s one of the safest ways of transporting data from location A to B. Got any questions? Let me know.