But without the key you can't access your data." You can mount your filesystem on it as usual. Writes to this device will be encrypted and reads decrypted. The user can basically specify one of the symmetric ciphers, a key (of any allowed size), an iv generation mode and then he can create a new block device in /dev. dm-crypt is such a device-mapper target that provides transparent encryption of block devices using the new Linux 2.6 cryptoapi. The device-mapper is used by the LVM2 and EVMS 2.x tools. The last thing you want to happen is to lose your keyring because something went wrong.įrom the dm-crypt website: " Device-mapper is a new infrastructure in the Linux 2.6 kernel that provides a generic way to create virtual layers of block devices that can do different things on top of real block devices like striping, concatenation, mirroring, snapshotting, etc. IMPORTANT: Make sure you make a backup copy of your ~/.gnupg directory before you do this.
INSTALL GPG SUITE TO FLASH DRIVE HOW TO
This Howto is very useful just for learning how to set up an encrypted storage area on a USB drive for general usage though.) There may be a huge number of other things to spend your time on that would increase your security more, but here's how you can encrypt your already encrypted key again, if you so desire. (Note from another reader:Although using your key on a computer that you don't have physical control of is still dangerous, and although your key is already encrypted with a well respected and highly secure encryption algorithm, you may prefer the extreme security of double encryption. What if you could securely store the key on a device that you always have on your person? Luckily, you can probably revoke the key before anybody is able to decrypt it because GPG keys are stored encrypted at all times by default, but that's a hassle. Even storing keys on a laptop can be troublesome-if the laptop gets stolen, so does your GPG key. Unfortunately, storing encryption keys where you don't have physical control is generally a bad idea. It is often desirable to be able to use a GPG key on more than one computer, for instance at home and at work, or on a desktop and a laptop. Storing GPG Keys on an Encrypted USB Flash Drive