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Encryption Security

Cross-Platform Encryption? 57

Posted by Cliff from the lowered-barriers-for-information-protection dept.
Dr. Sp0ng asks: "I'm sure a lot of Slashdot readers carry around USB keychain drives or other portable media. What cross-platform encryption solutions have you found for these? The ideal solution would be something which can create a true encrypted disk image in a file, along with Windows and OS X (and perhaps even Linux) standalone executables which can mount these without requiring you to install anything. Obviously something like GnuPG could be used, but it won't let you create an actual mountable filesystem. There are plenty of Windows solutions, and Mac OS X users can simply create an encrypted DMG, but are there any cross-platform solutions out there?"
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Cross-Platform Encryption? More

Cross-Platform Encryption?

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  • Althought windows only, Truecrypt [truecrypt.org] looks really cool and can be a real lifesaver in conjunction with pendrives or even gmail.

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    • Re:Truecrypt (Score:3, Informative)

      by avalys ( 221114 )
      Ditto. Truecrypt is great, and free.

      They are also coming out with a Linux version in the future, but I don't know of the timeframe.

      Unfortunately, an OS X port is not planned.

      • Ditto. Truecrypt is great, and free.

        Although free to use, it's free-ness in other respects is unclear. The code is available to read (technically "open source"), but the license is a complete mish-mash of components, reflecting all the different contributions to it over the years: http://www.truecrypt.org/license.php [truecrypt.org]

        In particular, it states: "This product may be freely copied and/or distributed, provided that it is not modified or repackaged" and then goes on to say that you *can* repackage it as lo

        • Huh? Free Software doesn't mean there are no conditions. Their license merely states conditions under which you may distribute modifications. Each Free Software license does that.
          • No, 'Free' in this sense normally refers to freedom. Something as described in the Debian Free Software Guidelines http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines [debian.org] is a typical benchmark for Free.

            Just being without cost ("free") doesn't make it Free!
            • Ok, name at least one item of the Debian Free Software Guidelines which the True License does not comply with.

              In case you haven't noticed: TrueCrypt is hosted on sourceforge.net, which allows only true open source projects.
              • By "True License" I mean "TrueCrypt License". And one more thing, Debian Free Software Guidelines were used as the basis in creating the OSI (opensource.org) definition of open source. All projects on sf.net are required to comply with that definition.
              • Well perhaps you're right: however I'm not sure, strictly, whether it meets "3. Derived works", partly since the amount of attribution and acknowledgment one must give to the original authors is very high. Although, IANAL and it's unclear.

                In whatever light, the TrueCrypt license is very messy and is extremely complicated. This in itself makes it a tricky choice.
                • > This in itself makes it a tricky choice.

                  Well, it depends on what you need it for. If you are an average Joe user, then I doubt you'll have troubles. BUT, if you are a software corporation that plans on using their code in its commercial products, then, yes, you'd better ask your lawyers. ;-)

    • What the hell is wrong with you? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      He specifically asked for a cross-platform solutions and not a Windows-only solution.

  • A simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Wednesday August 24, 2005 @06:47PM (#13393232) Homepage
    This is not exactly what you are looking for, but how about ...

    A big ZIP file on the drive.

    + It is encrypted.
    + It is cross platform if the underlying File System is.
    - The computer needs a ZIP file decrypter and a encrypter if you want read/write.
    - It acts like a file system, but really isn't.
    - Not the best encryption.

    • Re:A simple solution (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jasonwea ( 598696 )
      And the worst negative of all for me:

      Typically one would have to decrypt the files to a local fixed disk where they live unencrypted while you work on them.

      Options such as RAM disks exist but how readily available are these? (Think of machines where you do not have root).
      • Even if you didn't have to decrypt the files to open them, there's a good chance a directly opened file from a compressed volume might make it to the pagefile unencrypted (or to temporary files in %TEMP%). Depends on what risks you're willing to take. If you're just transporting files between trusted machines through untrusted areas, this may be perfectly fine (e.g. USB flash drive on a keychain). If you expect your files to be secure just because they're in an encrypted state on the disk, you might be d

        • Re:A simple solution (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          If the goal is to transport files between trusted computers, and be safe in case you drop your USB key and someone unscrupulous finds it... this seems like a case where one-time pad could be a good solution. You'd first have to transport a random file the size of the USB key to each of your trusted computers, and you'd need a file system driver that uses a prespecified OTP file to XOR the data.

          Anyone who gets hold of the USB key can't do anything with it, unless they also have the OTP file. The "one time"

    • Re:A simple solution (Score:2, Informative)

      by Skuggamara ( 853341 ) *
      I believe ZIP is encryptable with AES-256 now. Wouldn't this be considered "good" encryption?
    • Is there some tool that you can use to mount a zip file as a VFS? You know, like the way XP opens ZIP files like any other folder.
      • Can't say for certain, but Xandros Linux does have this behavior of handling a zip file like a folder. Its available via a free download so you may want to check it out.

  • Encrypted DMG on OS X only supports AES-128 (Score:3, Informative)

    by zhenga ( 770390 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2005 @07:03PM (#13393336)

    Altho Disk Utility on OS X can create encrypted disk images, it only has one encryption method which is AES-128.
    (prove me wrong here, but i've search many times on google to see if other encryption methods were available)

    I once created a 4 GB encrypted sparse disk image, but copying large files to it will always result in an inresponsive OS on my 867MHz G4.

    Maybe a fixed sized image will work better, but what I really want is support for other encryption algorythms so the user can make the trade-off between speed and security/paranoid level. I for one would not mind encrypting a disk with Blowfish only.

    On Windows I use TrueCrypt, I can't wait to see an OS X port of that (and other platforms ofcourse ;)

  • QEMU? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kisielk ( 467327 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2005 @07:17PM (#13393444)
    I've been thinking about doing a QEMU setup on a flash drive with an encrypted file system, and including QEMU executables for various OSs. You coul d then boot up the QEMU image, which could have networking support with Samba or something, and then access the files over the network.

    I haven't actually tried this yet, and I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea, but it's one suggestion. Has anyone else tried this? Any comments or suggestions?

  • Previously on Ask Slashdot... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2005 @07:37PM (#13393562)

    A pretty much identical Ask Slashdot from two years ago: Multi-Platform Encrypted Disk Image Formats? [slashdot.org]

  • FreeOFTE for Win/Lin or ccrypt for Mac/Win/Lin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trepalium ( 109107 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2005 @08:10PM (#13393750)
    FreeOTFE [freeotfe.org] runs in Windows and is compatible with Linux losetup/dm-crypt volumes. The only Win/Mac cross encryption program I've found is ccrypt [mathstat.dal.ca] which is unfortunately just a simple file encryption program.
  • bcrypt [sourceforge.net] and ccrypt [sourceforge.net]. They're all you need. Windows, Linux, whatever. Open-source and very good ciphers.
  • One word: Java.

    It runs on Linux, Windows, OSX.

  • Just an idea.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by martian67 ( 892569 )
    I've wished for something similar in the past. One solution that occurred to me would be to create an encrypted loopback filesystem under Linux. For those not familiar with this scheme, it essentially encapsulates a filesystem in a regular file and [en|de]crypts it at the kernel level.

    One potential way to access this from Windows would be using Namespace Extensions. I believe this is the way that "special folders" such as Control Panel and Scheduled Tasks are integrated into the Explorer. It would seem to b
  • BestCrypt [jetico.com] (about $60 or 60 Euro also) creates a virtual drive into an ecrypted file and has versions available for Windows and Linux. Their SDK is free and includes source code at least for the encryption algorithms to verify they are safe and lets you plug in your own. The same file can be used in windows and linux and can even be accessed on a network share since the data is decrypted as it is used, sniffers would only see encrypted data being transferred.

    It also includes the ability to use hidden vol

  • I just carry a usb pen with my secrect/public keys, I have a really long password, 4096 bit key, and every file is ascii armor encoded

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