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linux encryption Essay

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.: Contents :.

I. INTRO
- About

II. ENCRYPTING
- Containers
- Drives
- Files

APPENDIX


.: I. INTRO :.

[-=] About [=-]

This is a quick rundown on how to encrypt files, containers, and drives under
Linux. The use of loopback encrypted filesystems and openssl is explained and examples are given. This paper should have you encrypting in no time. The following commands were done running kernel 2.6.9.

.: ENCRYPTING :.

I'll outline how to create encrypted containers and drives using the loopback filesystem support and file encryption via openssl.

[-=] Containers [=-]

This is essentially creating a filesystem…show more content…
mkfs -t ext2 /dev/loop0

- The first parameter -t ext2 instructs mkfs to format the file with the ext2 filesystem. This is recommended as it allows you to resize the file if need be.

- The last parameter points toward the /dev/loop0 device on which the file was bound.

losetup -d /dev/loop0

- This command detaches and frees the /dev/loop0 device.

Fourth, mounting your encrypted filesystem.

mount -o encryption=aes256 crypto.img crypto_home

- Using the mount the command the first parameter to be entered is encryption=aes256 which will tell the mount command which cipher to use.
The value must be the cipher which you used to encrypt the file.

- The second parameter specifies location of file to mount.

- The third parameter designates the folder on which to mount the file.

Once mounted you can move files into the mount point and create files within it and when you are done simply unmount the file.

[-=] Drives [=-]

First, assuming you formated your drive bind the drive to a loopback device.

losetup -e aes256 /dev/loop0 /dev/sda1

- The parameter -e aes256 at the beginning instructs losetup on which cipher to use. The cipher type is dependent on what your kernel supports.
In this example the AES 256 bit cipher is used but you can use other cipher types such as blowfish interchangeably.

- The second parameter /dev/loop0 is the device to which we bind the drive too. Binding the drive will allow us to format the file with filesystem.

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