Cheap Alternative To PGPDisk

[paulsomm]

Well, one of the most frustrating things about switching OS's is to find a PGPDisk-like utility. PGPDisk, for those who don't know, is a program that creates an encrypred disk image that one can mount as a Volume and access as one would any disk. The filesystem on the volume is encrypted and the files are encrypted/decrypted on the fly.

On MacOS9 and Windows, I've used PGPDisk for this. On Linux I use BestCrypt. On OSX no one has yet to make a proper utility for doing such.

However, I noticed the other day while making a .dmg file using Disk Copy that it had a tag called "Encryption." When i clicked it, I was shown the option to use "AES-128". Way cool. So now I have an AES-128 encrypted .DMG disk image for all my secret files.

Its not the perfect solution. BestCrypt has different encryption routines and I generally choose CAST-128 because it's yet to be cracked, and AES-128 bothers me because it's the "approved" government standard and I don't exactly trust the U.S. government when it comes to privacy. But, until someone makes osmehting better, it's better'n nuttin, especially since my main reason for it is in case someone steals my laptop they won't get willy-nilly access to my writings.

BTW, it looks as those DiskCopy can support multiple encryption types since the selector is a drop-down. does anyone know of how to code and implement other encryption routines for DiskCopy?

Better yet, does anyone know of a PGPDisk/BestCrypt type of app for OSX?

[scope]

Ignore this...

[paulsomm]

Originally posted by scope
Ignore this...

?

[blb]

Originally posted by paulsomm
...
Its not the perfect solution. BestCrypt has different encryption routines and I generally choose CAST-128 because it's yet to be cracked, and AES-128 bothers me because it's the "approved" government standard and I don't exactly trust the U.S. government when it comes to privacy. But, until someone makes osmehting better, it's better'n nuttin, especially since my main reason for it is in case someone steals my laptop they won't get willy-nilly access to my writings.

Note that, yes, AES is the NIST-approved algorithm, but they had nothing to do with the design. It was designed by a couple of people in Belgium, and attacked over the last couple of years by many cryptanalysts the world over.

[paulsomm]

Originally posted by blb


Note that, yes, AES is the NIST-approved algorithm, but they had nothing to do with the design. It was designed by a couple of people in Belgium, and attacked over the last couple of years by many cryptanalysts the world over.

Oh, I thought you were criticising the DiskCopy/encrypted disk part.

[scruffy]

Why would the U.S. gov't approve that particular encryption scheme, over other ones?

Witness DES, and the clipper chip before that - if the US government 'endorses' encryption, it's a pretty safe bet that it's not very good encryption.

From the linked page:

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) will be a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication that will specify a cryptographic algorithm for use by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive (unclassified) information. NIST also anticipates that the AES will be widely used on a voluntary basis by organizations, institutions, and individuals outside of the U.S. Government - and outside of the United States - in some cases.

Gosh, if it's good enough to protect unclassified documents, and voluntary use by NGOs in some cases, it must be pretty much bulletproof.

[blb]

Originally posted by scruffy
Witness DES, and the clipper chip before that - if the US government 'endorses' encryption, it's a pretty safe bet that it's not very good encryption.

Clipper was definitely an extremely bad idea, and why it eventually died off. But DES still hasn't been broken, it simply has too few bits in its key. Many private-sector crypto experts participated in the NIST review searching for AES, both inside and outside the US, so just because the US govt. picked it doesn't mean it has holes (not that I am some supporter of the US govt. as it is, but that's a whole other post...).