Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way E veryone has les that they don’t want other to see. It may be a document consisting of all your login passwords, your bank account in- formation or the romance photos/videos (oops…) that you want to keep out of your wife/husband’s sight. In case you are wondering how to encrypt the les/folders/entire hard drive and keep it safe from prying eyes, here is an easy method. TrueCrypt is a free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Li- nux. What it does is to create a virtual encrypted disk within a le and mounts it as a real disk. You can use it to • encrypt les with sensitive content • encrypt an entire partition or storage device such as USB ash drive or hard drive • encrypt a partition or drive where Windows is installed. This will prevent people from booting up your laptop in the event that it is stolen. In this tutorial, I will illustrate the installation and conguration of TrueCrypt on a Linux machine (to be exact, Ubuntu Gutsy). The procedure will be the same for Windows and Mac OSX. Download TrueCrypt from http://www.truecrypt. org/downloads.php. Choose your installer format. Since I am using Ubuntu, I selected Ubuntu – x86 (.deb) from the Linux dropdown box. Save the tar le to your home folder. Extract it using Archive Manager. You should nd a truecrypt_5.1a-0_ i386.deb le inside the extracted folder. Double click to install the application. Open up the terminal (Application -> Accessories -> Terminal), type truecrypt The main window will pop up. Create a new file volume Press ‘Create Volume‘ to open up a new window. Check the button beside “Create a standard True- Crypt volume“. If you do not want your le volume to be visible, select “Create a hidden TrueCrypt vo- lume“. Click Next. April 17, 2008 http://maketecheasier.com/truecrypt-encrypt-your-data-the-easy-way/2008/04/17 Page 1 Damien Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way In the next window, select the location of the le volume. If the le does not exists, TrueCrypt will create it for you. To encrypt your USB drive, click “Select Device” and point the path to your USB drive. Specify the le size of the volume. This will deter- mine how much data you can store in the volume. For illustration purpose, I only created a 1 GB le volume. Select the encryption algorithm. I have chosen AES since that is the most widely used encryption algo- rithm. You can also choose other algorithm such as Twosh and Serpent. The next step is to create your password. Make sure you choose a strong password that consists of upper case, lower case, number and special characters. TrueCrypt allows you to enter up to 64 characters for your password. April 17, 2008 http://maketecheasier.com/truecrypt-encrypt-your-data-the-easy-way/2008/04/17 Page 2 Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way For additional protection, you may want to use a keyle together with your password. A keyle is a le whose content is combined with a password. Until you key in the correct password and specied the correct keyle, you won’t be able to mount the encrypted le. You can use any kind of les as your keyles (mp3, jpg, zip or avi) and there is no limitation to how many keyles you can use. If you specify a folder, all the les inside the folder will be used as the keyles. (Beware: do not lose the keyles or modify the header. If TrueCrypt cannot authenticate the keyle content, you will lose all your encrypted data) Choose your le format. You only have a choice: FAT format. Click next. This is the part where you create the encryption key. Inside the window, move your mouse as randomly as possible. The longer you move, the stronger is the encryption. When you are done, click on the ‘Format‘ button to create the le volume. When it is done, you should see the “Volume Created” dialog box. Click ‘Exit‘ April 17, 2008 http://maketecheasier.com/truecrypt-encrypt-your-data-the-easy-way/2008/04/17 Page 3 Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way Mounting and adding files to the volume Back to the main window, click on the slot 1. In the bottom of the window, under the Volume section, click on the “Select File” and load the lepath to your le volume. Click ‘Mount‘. You will be asked to provide authen- tication. Now open up your Nautilus, you should see your le volume mounted. You can start transferring your les into the volume. When you are done, click on the ‘Dismount‘ button to dismount the volume. Click ‘Exit‘ to close the TrueCrypt window. Note that this does not close down TrueCrypt entirely. To end the session, right click the TrueCrypt icon on the top system bar and select ‘Exit‘. For easy access to TrueCrypt, you might want to create a launcher on your desktop. Right click your desktop and select “Create Launcher“. Fill in the detail as shown in the screenshot below and click ‘OK‘. You can now see the launcher on your desktop. Enjoy! April 17, 2008 http://maketecheasier.com/truecrypt-encrypt-your-data-the-easy-way/2008/04/17 Page 4 . Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way E veryone has les that they don’t want other to see 2008 http://maketecheasier.com/truecrypt-encrypt-your-data-the-easy-way/2008/04/17 Page 1 Damien Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way In the next window, select the location of the le volume 2008 http://maketecheasier.com/truecrypt-encrypt-your-data-the-easy-way/2008/04/17 Page 2 Printed with joliprint Make Tech Easier TrueCrypt: Encrypt Your Data The Easy Way For additional protection, you may want to use a keyle