Learn to protect your data by encrypting your files thanks to Encryptpad in Ubuntu.
What is Encryptpad?
Encryptpad is an application that has been developed to view and edit symmetrically encrypted text.
It is a tool whose purpose is to encrypt and decrypt binary files on the disk while offering integrated measures to protect information and uses the OpenPGP RFC 4880 quality file format to guarantee the security of information.
Install Repository & Update Ubuntu
In the first place it will be necessary to install the following repository for the optimal installation of Encryptpad:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
Once the repository is installed, we proceed to update the packages in Ubuntu 16.10 using the command:
sudo apt-get update
Install & Use Encryptpad in Ubuntu
Now we proceed with the installation of Encryptpad in Ubuntu, for this we execute the following command.
sudo apt-get install encryptpad encryptcli
When running Encryptpad we will see the following environment. As we see it is a normal text editor.
There we can enter some text or use the Open option to upload an existing file. Once we have the text that we want to encrypt click on the Save button and in the Files of type field we set the value
Encryptpad (*.epd)
Click on the Save button, the following window will be activated where we will establish the respective credentials. Once defined click on OK.
Now when we try to access the file we will see the following:
There we will enter our password to access the contents of the file, otherwise this will be the result obtained:
How To Create Files with Double Encryption
There is a possibility that the file on which we are working is very confidential, in this case we can apply a double encryption to increase the security of it.
For this we open Encryptpad, enter the text to be protected and click on the “Generate Key” icon (First key icon):
The following window will be displayed.
There we have the possibility to select some key already stored in the system or allow Encryptpad to generate one of us automatically by selecting the option “Key in Repository”, if we select this option we establish the name of the key and click on OK.
Pressing OK automatically opens the following window where we will define the password:
Click on OK, and we will see the following message. Click on the Yes option to generate the respective key to the file.
This file will be saved as GnuPG (* .gpg), and when you try to access it, this will be its content. As we see, its content is protected.
If we want to decrypt this file, we must click on the “File Encryption” icon, and in the displayed window we activate the Decrypt box. There we select the file to decrypt and the destination route.
Click on the Start button and first enter the assigned password and then the password to see the contents of the file.
How To Check Encryption Status from the Terminal
We can access the terminal to see in detail the status of the encryption of a certain file. For this example we will use the gpg file.
We access the terminal, we go to the directory where the file is located, and there we execute the following command:
gpg --list-packets "archivo.gpg"
We will see that a pop-up window is displayed where it will be necessary to enter the password of the file:
Once we click on OK and we will see in detail all the information about the encrypted file: