Cross Platform Pen Drive Encryption Programs?

[Brian_Holiday]

I need an encryption program for my pen drives. I need a program that:

1) Will run from the drive, without the need to install on the machine.

2) Has versions that will work in Linux and Windows.

3) Cheap is good, free is better, open-source gives me the warm and fuzzys.

My research so far hasn't turned up any candidates. They all seem to require installation on the Windows machine. I don't have rights to do that on all of the machines I use.

Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

TIA,

BH

[iccaros]

gpg

here is a windows how-to

http://www.glump.net/dokuwiki/gpg/gpg_intro

most Liunx distro like ubuntu have it built in..

or this is the step to set it up linux for auto encrypt decryp (windows has not way to setup how you mount and unmount a drive or folder that I know of)

This chapter is based on the previous one. Only the differences are decribed.

A great disadavtage of the solution above is, that you have to remember and type in a password of at least 20 characters. This without typing errors.

Another disadvantage is, that it is impossible to change the password after setup without repeating the setup process (and loosing all data).

But there is the following solution:

   1. store the password in a file, e.g. /key
   2. now encrypt this file symmetrically with GPG:
	  gpg -c /key
   3. the file with the unencrypted key should be backed up in a safe, end removed from the harddisk:
	  wipe /key
   4. now setup the partition so, that it can be decrypted with the (simpler) GPG key for the encrypted key file, and the harddisk is decrypted with the decrypted key file:
	  losetup -e AES256 -K /key.gpg /dev/loop4 /dev/hda3
   5. don't forget to format (mkfs.reiserfs) and free the loop (losetup -d)
   6. add the following line to file /etc/fstab:
	  /dev/hda3 /privat reiserfs loop,encryption=AES256,gpgkey=/key.gpg
	  (optional with noauto,user)
   7. now, when you mount it, you can enter the GPG password

You can change the GPG by simply decoding it (gpg -d key.gpg), and then reencode it with a new password. The key for the harddisk can still not be changed.

see http://marc.waeckerlin.org/linux/crypt.php.en

for more information

note you can set this up in windows and copy the gpg key to your linux. then add a fstab entry like this

/dev/sda1 /privat vfat loop,encryption=AES256,gpgkey=/key.gpg

to make it work

Edited January 9, 2006 by iccaros