Hiding Files with Truecrypt no comments
Eversince I started computing (back when I was using C64), I was always into cryptography, due largely to my dad’s Cold War spy novels scattered throughout our house. I always wanted to play with codes and ciphers. This journey took me to play with other crypto-software like PCTools7’s PCSecure, my own scripts and codes using substitution cipher and PGP.
After PGP things got really serious for me crypto-wise. The words from Phil Zimmerman’s PGP help file and Bruce Schneier’s Applied Cryptography book constantly echoed in my mind was this:
“There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files.
This book is about the latter.”
– Bruce Schneier
PGP now has been largely replaced by GnuPG. Sure GPG can do all things PGP can do email- and file-wise (file encryption, email encryption, signatures, etc). But one thing GPG lacked is the ability to encrypt a large section of your disk and use that as sort of a hidden container for all your “top-secret” files. There were a lot of commercial software that were marketed for this purpose. But PGP had a tool called “PGPDisk” that is available for download — free. I used PGPDisk extensively. But there were some things about it that I didn’t like. One of them was the ability to be run under Linux. I searched for this “universal” drive encryption tool extensively. Found and played with some of them (only the free ones). Here’s a big list comparing OTFE tools (On-The-Fly-Encryption) available.
So my search continued and around 3 years ago I found Truecrypt. Here’s what caught my eyes:
“Truecrypt — Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux!”
– www.truecrypt.org
It ran on Windows and on Linux, and best of all it’s open-source! Open-source programs are good, but for crypto-software, it’s a must. Only by being open can a software be reviewed by anybody around the world, making sure it has no hidden backdoors or holes that other people who know can use to get access to your hidden files.
So if you have files that you want to keep private in a computer that can be accessed by other people, it’s a must for you to have Truecrypt. It’s very simple to use and very secure. Here’s a nice howto on how to get up and going with using Truecrypt in no time at all!
On later posts I would write about some tips about the various ways you can use Truecrypt.
Happy secure computing!
