Encrypted private directories coming to Ubuntu
Encrypted private directories are the one thing that would get me to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 this October. Ubuntu’s Dustin Kirkland explains it all:
How does it work?
The underlying technology is a cryptographic virtual filesystem in the Linux kernel called eCryptfs, authored by Michael Halcrow of IBM.
When a user logs into an Ubuntu Intrepid system, their login passphrase is automatically used to decrypt a randomly generated mount passphrase. This mount passphrase will then cryptographically mount ~/.Private onto ~/Private. As long as ~/Private is mounted, the user can read and write sensitive data to files and directories under the virtual filesystem on ~/Private. The actual files stored in the underlying filesystem are encrypted, and located in ~/.Private. The only passphrase required is obtained when logging in (via console, ssh, gdm, etc). And the only files encrypted are those that the user consciously places in ~/Private. The user can then incrementally backup the encrypted ~/.Private directory to off-site storage.
Read more at CLICK
