Category: Encryption

There’s something about data backups – what’s the big deal!

It’s been almost 12 years since using the 128 MB Transcend USB hard drive for data backups. On the other hand there’s also a 128 KB Transcend USB pen drive from 2006 that still works quite well today plus a Kingston 1 GB USB pen drive. In 12 years, storage device and storage media technology … Continue reading There’s something about data backups – what’s the big deal! →

An ode to passwords – safeguarding online accounts

Every account created (online or offline) requires additional elements to be remembered the service or the device or the website or the application; the user name or ID that is to be used to login in to it, and; the associated password. It's easy to remember sites, applications, services and associated user IDs. However, to … Continue reading An ode to passwords – safeguarding online accounts →

How to display the digital signature green tick in a signed PDF document using PDF Studio Viewer on LinuxMint or Debian or Ubuntu Linux

Signed PDF documents normally display a green tick when the signature is valid when opened with Acrobat PDF reader. Since a long time, Adobe Acrobat Reader is no more available for Linux and the best alternative to verify signed PDF documents is PDF Studio Viewer by Qoppa. Open the signed PDF file using PDF Studio … Continue reading How to display the digital signature green tick in a signed PDF document using PDF Studio Viewer on LinuxMint or Debian or Ubuntu Linux →

How to use deja-dup for data backups on Linux

Deja-dup is a Gnome application. It can be used for data backups of the computer to a USB drive, another hard disk, folder or even to the cloud. Data backups are encrypted using the Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) shared key as they are done. The first backup takes time, depending on the data to be … Continue reading How to use deja-dup for data backups on Linux →

How to create and use LUKS encrypted partition in Linux

It is easy to create a LUKS container and a partition within it, using the GUI on Linux. The application that enables this easily is the gnome-disk-utility. However, if you want to use the command line to set up a LUKS encrypted device, read on. Exercise appropriate caution before doing any of the below with … Continue reading How to create and use LUKS encrypted partition in Linux →

Error when opening a LUKS encrypted container file /dev/loop0 Device or resource is busy on Ubuntu 18.10 Gnome Desktop

When you enter the command below in a terminal window: $ sudo /sbin/losetup /dev/loop0 /home/user1/folder1/containerdatafile <enter> Device error or resource busy error message appears and the device is not setup. The reason is that /dev/loop0 is taken by snap. To overcome the error, change /dev/loop0 to something else like /dev/loop35 Or, if you do not … Continue reading Error when opening a LUKS encrypted container file /dev/loop0 Device or resource is busy on Ubuntu 18.10 Gnome Desktop →

How to add user with encrypted home folder in Xubuntu 18.04 LTS or Ubuntu 18.10

After a long while, upgraded from Xubuntu 16.04 LTS to Xubuntu 18.04 LTS and was in for a surprise. No encrypted home folder. Support for this was dropped as ecryptfs-utils was no more maintained by it's maintainer. However, fret not. Encrypted home folders can still be created as below. Make sure you take a backup … Continue reading How to add user with encrypted home folder in Xubuntu 18.04 LTS or Ubuntu 18.10 →

Recover encrypted ecryptfs home folder from encrypted dm-crypt luks disk volume

Whew... saved by the skin of teeth. The grub2 bootloader of my computer got corrupt. I was not able to boot into the computer and all was lost. For security reasons, I set up LVM with full disk encryption. Thereafter, each user's home folder was further encrypted with ecryptfs (the default you get when you … Continue reading Recover encrypted ecryptfs home folder from encrypted dm-crypt luks disk volume →