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TrueCrypt doesn't really work because you can't mount it from several places at the same time. I looked up for other solutions which allow this (for example by

TrueCrypt doesn't really work because you can't mount it from several places at the same time. I looked up for other solutions which allow this (for example by doing the encryption separately for each file; but I could also think about other things). I only found http://www.arg0.net/encfs http://www.arg0.net/encfs so far but I didn't tried yet. It does the encryption separately for each file.

dermatthias 16y ago
I use encFS for the sensitive files inside my Dropbox and it works really well. Because it is a per file based encryption and most of my sensitive files are rather small (<1MB), there are no (noticeable) speed problems. In combination with some (really simple) bash scripts for mount- and unmounting, this is imho a good way to encrypyt files inside your Dropbox.
cookiecaper 16y ago
You can do this with ecryptfs, which is built into the kernel. It transparently encrypts each file in a "lower" directory; this directory is mounted to a "higher" directory where the files are transparently encrypted/decrypted as needed. It's a great solution for this kind of stuff and it lives in the kernel. You don't have to deal with FUSE or any of that.
pbh 16y ago
encfs didn't work for me either. See this comment from a year and a half ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=895660 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=895660 Dropbox supposedly encrypts server side. If you want to encrypt client-side, use SpiderOak or TarSnap. These hacks on top of Dropbox don't mesh with the semantics of Dropbox properly and will cause problems days, weeks, or months down the line unless managed extremely carefully.
- albertzeyer 16y ago
  Yes, I already thought about that case. But I don't think it should be complicated to extend EncFS to handle that well (to just provide both versions to the end user in that case).
kijinbear 16y ago
TrueCrypt is OK if you only use Dropbox for backup. But as soon as sync comes into the picture, all hell breaks loose. Remember, a TrueCrypt volume contains an entire file system inside. File systems seriously don't like it when you modify bits and pieces of it from under their feet. You can't use any file in the volume until you've finished using the volume in the other computer. EncFS is somewhat better in terms of sync, because it encrypts each file separately. Here's a nice tutorial: http://pragmattica.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/encrypting-your-dropbox-seamlessly-and-automatically/ http://pragmattica.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/encrypting-your-... I have ~2.5GB of encrypted files in my Dropbox, and as long as I don't try to edit the same file in two places at the same time, it works like a charm. (Conflicts can be nasty, as another comment says. But it's not as bad as TrueCrypt, because EncFS works per-file.) Editing different files at the same time, on the other hand, is kosher. There are, however, a few other problems with EncFS. First of all, you can't mount an EncFS directory tree from Windows. There's an actively developed Windows port of EncFS out there (which uses Dokan), but I've never been able to get it to work properly. Also, Windows has a maximum path length limit of 260 chars. Since EncFS pads file names with unique IVs and base64 encodes them after encrypting them, you can reach this limit after only 3-4 levels of subdirectories. Paths which are too long for Windows will simply be omitted from the Windows copy of your Dropbox folder. So if you ever treat the Windows copy as an authoritative backup, you're in for a nasty surprise. Linux is OK up to 4096 chars. I'm not sure how OSX does it. Lastly, Dropbox in Linux tends to choke when you add a large number of files with encrypted filenames. It's not uncommon for Dropbox to declare a "case conflict" in that situation when there actually isn't any case conflict. This can seriously damage your EncFS directory tree, because Dropbox adds the phrase "(Case Conflict 1)" to random files and folders. An easily solution is to stop Dropbox, add the files, and restart Dropbox again. But this can get annoying after a while.
- bobds 16y ago
  That didn't sound completely right, so I checked it out. You can have a path with ~32k characters actually. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29.... I know that not all software supports those long file/path names, so yeah, you are probably in for some surprises.

dermatthias 16y ago

I use encFS for the sensitive files inside my Dropbox and it works really well. Because it is a per file based encryption and most of my sensitive files are rather small (<1MB), there are no (noticeable) speed problems. In combination with some (really simple) bash scripts for mount- and unmounting, this is imho a good way to encrypyt files inside your Dropbox.

cookiecaper 16y ago

You can do this with ecryptfs, which is built into the kernel. It transparently encrypts each file in a "lower" directory; this directory is mounted to a "higher" directory where the files are transparently encrypted/decrypted as needed. It's a great solution for this kind of stuff and it lives in the kernel. You don't have to deal with FUSE or any of that.

pbh 16y ago

encfs didn't work for me either. See this comment from a year and a half ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=895660 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=895660 Dropbox supposedly encrypts server side. If you want to encrypt client-side, use SpiderOak or TarSnap. These hacks on top of Dropbox don't mesh with the semantics of Dropbox properly and will cause problems days, weeks, or months down the line unless managed extremely carefully.

albertzeyer 16y ago
Yes, I already thought about that case. But I don't think it should be complicated to extend EncFS to handle that well (to just provide both versions to the end user in that case).

kijinbear 16y ago

TrueCrypt is OK if you only use Dropbox for backup. But as soon as sync comes into the picture, all hell breaks loose. Remember, a TrueCrypt volume contains an entire file system inside. File systems seriously don't like it when you modify bits and pieces of it from under their feet. You can't use any file in the volume until you've finished using the volume in the other computer. EncFS is somewhat better in terms of sync, because it encrypts each file separately. Here's a nice tutorial: http://pragmattica.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/encrypting-your-dropbox-seamlessly-and-automatically/ http://pragmattica.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/encrypting-your-... I have ~2.5GB of encrypted files in my Dropbox, and as long as I don't try to edit the same file in two places at the same time, it works like a charm. (Conflicts can be nasty, as another comment says. But it's not as bad as TrueCrypt, because EncFS works per-file.) Editing different files at the same time, on the other hand, is kosher. There are, however, a few other problems with EncFS. First of all, you can't mount an EncFS directory tree from Windows. There's an actively developed Windows port of EncFS out there (which uses Dokan), but I've never been able to get it to work properly. Also, Windows has a maximum path length limit of 260 chars. Since EncFS pads file names with unique IVs and base64 encodes them after encrypting them, you can reach this limit after only 3-4 levels of subdirectories. Paths which are too long for Windows will simply be omitted from the Windows copy of your Dropbox folder. So if you ever treat the Windows copy as an authoritative backup, you're in for a nasty surprise. Linux is OK up to 4096 chars. I'm not sure how OSX does it. Lastly, Dropbox in Linux tends to choke when you add a large number of files with encrypted filenames. It's not uncommon for Dropbox to declare a "case conflict" in that situation when there actually isn't any case conflict. This can seriously damage your EncFS directory tree, because Dropbox adds the phrase "(Case Conflict 1)" to random files and folders. An easily solution is to stop Dropbox, add the files, and restart Dropbox again. But this can get annoying after a while.

bobds 16y ago
That didn't sound completely right, so I checked it out. You can have a path with ~32k characters actually. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29.... I know that not all software supports those long file/path names, so yeah, you are probably in for some surprises.