Encrypted file system

J

JamesB

Registered
Does / will OSX support an encrypted file system (similar to NTFS I assume)? I really need to be able to have data security, so that if a laptop is stolen, data is unrecoverable.

Anyone know?

Thanks.
 
PGP (or GPG) could be used, but it'd be unnecessarily complicated. You'd have to unencrypt a file to work on it, then reencrypt it when you're done...

The solution: Make a disk image. Go into Utilities and go to Disk Copy. Make a new image big enough to fit all the files you need encrypted on, and select the encryption option.

Now you'll be asked for the passphrase you encrypted the disk image with when you mount it. After that, it acts like a normal disk, but when you unmount it, you need the passphrase to mount it again. Or you can add the passphrase to your keychain.

I'm not sure how good the encryption on it is.
 
If you wish to use a truely encrypted file system, you would need to compile that into the kernel. Although Mac OS X uses a microkernel, something like this is rather extreme, and would need to be inserted into the kernel.

Besides being a pain to get working, you would need to provide a password either on boot, or when you mount the encrypted partition.

If you're interested in this, I suggest you sign up for the Darwin hackers mailing list at:
http://www.opendarwin.org/mailman/listinfo/hackers
You may also find information at freebsd.org
 
Excellent! Thanks for taking the time to test this!!

BTW, how secure is AES?? Vague question, I know, but relative to say PGP?
 
I've also heard that with pgp, your message is encrypted at 128 bits, and then the password to that is added, and encrypted at a higher level.

Someone told me that, but I don't reall know how true or false it is :)
 
You could use Disk Copy to make an encrypted disk image using AES (or i that what you guys have been talking about ?)
 
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