[kwlug-disc] Encrypted file systems

[William Park]

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 04:37:46PM -0700, Raul Suarez wrote:
> My father has the need to keep some files secure in case someone
> breaks into his home (before you think it's far fetched: He lives in
> Mexico City).
> 
> The computer is a "common" computer in his den used every now and then
> by my siblings and other people (My parents are quite social). He does
> not want to block access to the computer to the people that already
> use it occasionally.
> 
> My first thought was to set up a partition with an encrypted file
> system in an external drive for him to put the private files there.
> This way he can have logical and physical security.
> 
> This computer is dual boot: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS / Windows XP Home  and
> ideally he wants to be able to access the files from either OS.

If dual booting, then I suspect this will not be possible, because
Windows doesn't support Linux filesystems, never mind the underlying
encrypted block device.  However, if Windows is another machine, then
you can mount the partition on Linux machine and SMB export that
filesystem, which is no different from non-encrypted partition, since
once mounted, it's public.

> 
> What encryption method or mechanism do you think would work better for
> him? If there aren't any cross platform, which one would be the best
> to do it in Linux?
> 
> Performance or latency are not a concern, he has a new quad core. Most
> of the files would be smaller files.
> 
>  Raul Suarez