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When you copy data to a memory stick, and you lose the stick, your data can be read by anyone who happens to find it. When you place data in the cloud, your data can be read and analyzed for commercial purposes such as offering you tailored ads.
The solution is to encrypt your data. This should be as hassle free as possible, and be independent of the operating system and platform you use – so you don’t have an excuse not to apply it.
The software package that can fulfill all these requirements is Cryptomator. It takes only a few seconds to install it. It is written in Java. The latest version at the time of writing is 1.3.2. Users of Ubuntu (and derivatives like Linux Mint) can install it in either of two ways, namely by installing a deb package, or by installing it from a repository. As the latter allows for automatic updates, this way will be described in the remainder of this article. All examples are taken from a Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon installation.
The first thing you need to do is to add the repository. Open a terminal window and type the following commands to add the repository and to install the software.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sebastian-stenzel/cryptomator
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cryptomator
This will also create a program icon as an easy way to start the software.
When you start Cryptomator, a dialog window appears that allows you to manage so-called vaults.
In our example, we are going to store a folder ‘Secrets’ that is located within the folder ‘Documents’ in a new vault called ‘DemoVault’.
Click on the + button to assign a new encrypted vault to a particular folder.
Then select the folder Secrets and enter the name DemoVault as can be seen in the following picture.
To conclude, you have to specify a password. The password may contain a mix of numbers and letters. An ideal password is a sentence and not a word. Don’t forget it as there is no recovery possible if you do. You can use a password manager such as KeePass2 if necessary.
You have now created your first vault. When you click on the button “More Options” you can specify that the vault will be mounted to the folder “DemoVault” and that this folder will be opened automatically (see picture below). To open it, click on the button “Unlock Vault”.
Depending on the configuration of your Linux system, you may or may not experience problems when writing/saving to an unlocked vault. The problems are caused by the way a webdav mount is handled by your Linux system. The developers of Cryptomator use gvfs to mount a webdav drive. This can cause problems on some systems. The solution is to use davfs. You can install it by opening a terminal window and typing
sudo apt-get install davfs2
After you’ve done that, you have to uncheck the option “Mount Drive”. Now you have to figure out what the webdav url is. Unlock the vault by entering your password. Click on the button next to “Lock Vault” and select the option “Copy WebDAV URL”.
Create a text document with the name ‘mount_vault.sh’ and enter the following 2 lines (the line starting with sudo is one line).
#!/bin/bash
sudo mount -t davfs http://localhost:42427/2BerFJngQY2v/DemoVault /home/john/Documents/Personal/DemoVault -o username=john,rw,uid=john,gid=john,file_mode=700,dir_mode=700
Notes:
http://localhost:42427/2BerFJngQY2v/DemoVault (This is yourWebDAV URL)
/home/john/Documents/Personal/DemoVault (This is an existing folder you want to mount the vault to)
Similarly, create a text document with the name ‘umount_vault.sh’ and enter the following 2 lines (the line starting with sudo is one line).
#!/bin/bash
sudo umount /home/john/Documents/Personal/DemoVault
Now you have to make the two files executable by issuing the commands:
chmod u+x ./mount_vault.sh
chmod u+x ./umount_vault.sh
Now you can use ./mount_vault.sh to mount your vault after you have unlocked it, and use ./umount_vault.sh to unmount it again. After that you just have to lock it. For the time being this is a workaround for the mount problem on systems that have problems using gvfs.
Cryptomator is free and open source. If you like it, and want to support its development, you can donate some money on their website. This way, the developers know their hard work is appreciated.