How to password protect a hidden directory

Question

I want to encrypt and password protect hidden directory and its components (.folder/something/some/) using a secondary password (not login password). I have downloaded Cryptkeeper but i didnt find an option to password protect hidden directory

Answer 1

First of all, Cryptkeeper does what you want, you only have to dive on how to use it for hidden folders as detailed for example here.

Otherwise, you can use this:

• Press Ctrl + Alt + T
• Run sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils
• Then ecryptfs-setup-private
• Finally: ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase

Create a folder for your private data and protect it with a passphrase which is different from your login password.

Also, if you do not need additional software, you can fulfill what you ask using your login password however by playing with file permissions:

chmod -v 700 /path/to/your/hidden/directory

An other secured and effective method is available on Ubuntu documentation.

Answer 2

Have you tried using the application mentioned in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedPrivateDirectory .

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In case encfs is what you're looking for:

1. Create a hidden directory (this is the encrypted storage) and mount it's content to another directory.

   $ encfs ~/.hidden_encrypted ~/hidden_contents

2. After adding adding the contents to ~/hidden_contents you can unmount it using

   $ fusermount -u ~/hiddent_contents

3. To remount ~/.hidden_encrypted repeat step 1.