TrueCrypt Tutorial: Truly Portable Data Encryption

TrueCrypt is one of the many disk encryption tools available in Linux and other Unices. Some of the features of truecrypt are as follows (and I quote):

• Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
• Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.
• Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
• Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
  
  1. Hidden volume (steganography).
  2. No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).
• Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish. Mode of operation: LRW.
  

Lipiec at Polishlinux.org has written a very good tutorial which explains how to setup and use truecrypt in Linux. He explains right from the start which is - download the code, compile, and install it to creating encryption volumes. Just so you know, truecrypt has been made available in deb and rpm formats as well. So if you are using one of the major Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora, you can skip the compilation from source step.

Truecrypt is available for Linux and Windows but the developers have provided a easy to use GUI only for Windows platform. Linux users are still made to depend on the command line to setup and manage encrypted volumes using truecrypt.

Email encryption tools for Gmail galore

One of the most useful email encryption programs you can use is PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or if you are like myself, a Free software supporter then you can use its GPLed counterpart called GnuPG (GPG). But with web mail gaining popularity, most people will find the use of these programs to encrypt or even sign their outgoing emails a chore.

Here is where browser plugins come into the picture. Dimitri Popov at linux.com has written a very useful article where he explains how to use the email encryption Firefox plugin called FireGPG to encrypt all your mails in your Gmail account. While KDE users will be aware of and have used KGPG - the front end tool for GnuPG, FireGPG is different in that, as a plugin, it is well integrated with your Firefox web browser and so you need not go outside your Gmail web interface to encrypt, decrypt or sign your mail. It can be done on the fly.

While on this topic of email encryption, I also came across a couple of projects which allow encryption of messages - not preferably emails. They are as follows :

Pidgin-Encryption - It transparently encrypts your instant messages with RSA encryption. It is Easy-to-use, but very secure. Pidgin (aka Gaim) is an instant messenger client for Linux which is used to connect to Yahoo messenger, Microsoft Messenger, AOL talk and many other instant messaging protocols.

OTR - Short for Off The Record messaging allows you to have private messaging using instant messaging and provides the following features - encryption of messages, authentication and deniability. It is also a pidgin plugin.

Gmail S/MIME is another project which provides Firefox users with S/MIME support for Gmail. S/MIME stands for Secure Multi purpose Internet Mail Extensions. S/MIME support is integrated directly into Google's Gmail web interface. It supports reading and sending of encrypted mail.

Lastly, check out this online javascript solution which encrypts and de-crypts your messages using a uniquely generated RSA private key. This project has been developed by the students of Stanford University.