Ubuntu – What’s the status of encfs

encfsencryptionSecurity

Is the encfs project no longer maintained? It seems the last update 1.7.4 was released on November 18 2010. In a security audit several weaknesses have been identified, but no updates have since been issued. Should encfs still be used? if not, why is it in the standard repositories of Ubuntu?

Best Answer

Yes, it does look as if encfs is no longer maintained. It is in Ubuntu 14.04 because it still is in Debian wheezy. It has been removed from Debian jessie, so should be gone from future versions of Ubuntu. Like the OP in this Debian bug report, I do not have the competence to judge this, but I recommend that you do not use it unless you have to, given the removal from jessie.

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Ubuntu – Filesystem that gives an encrypted view of a directory—the inverse of EncFS

There actually is an Encfs "inverted" option. From the Encfs man page:

   --reverse
       Normally EncFS provides a plaintext view of data on demand.  Normally it stores enciphered data and displays plaintext data.  With --reverse it
       takes as source plaintext data and produces enciphered data on-demand.  This can be useful for creating remote encrypted backups, where you do
       not wish to keep the local files unencrypted.

       For example, the following would create an encrypted view in /tmp/crypt-view.

           encfs --reverse /home/me /tmp/crypt-view

       You could then copy the /tmp/crypt-view directory in order to have a copy of the encrypted data.  You must also keep a copy of the file
       /home/me/.encfs5 which contains the filesystem information.  Together, the two can be used to reproduce the unencrypted data:

           ENCFS5_CONFIG=/home/me/.encfs5 encfs /tmp/crypt-view /tmp/plain-view

       Now /tmp/plain-view contains the same data as /home/me

       Note that --reverse mode only works with limited configuration options, so many settings may be disabled when used.

I have not tried it for syncing, but I think it would work as long as you use the same .encfs5 config folder at the other end.

Ubuntu – EncFs insecure, what to use now

As I write this, there seem to be quite a few open source tools similar to encfs (but more "modern" than encfs) that could be able to encrypt files in a "cloud friendly" way (i.e. providing per-file encryption, keeping modification times, and so on).

Most of them are fine if you are using only Ubuntu or any other Linux system (ecryptfs seems good), but things become difficult if you require interoperability with other OSes and mobile devices, as most of us is expecting nowadays.

Just to name a few:

Cryptomator seems to be the only one that works "everywhere", from any GNU/Linux OS to Android. There's even a PPA for Ubuntu and binaries for several other distros and OSes.
ecryptfs works only on GNU/Linux systems (like Ubuntu, but also ChromeOS), and it's nice if you won't need to access your files from non-Linux OSes, but people say there may be some problems with cloud sync tools.
CryFS it's a young solution, works only on Linux for now, but there are plans to port it to MacOS and Windows as well. Maybe it worths some attention in the future.

You may find also interesting this comparison of tools from the CryFS website.

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Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Filesystem that gives an encrypted view of a directory—the inverse of EncFS

Ubuntu – EncFs insecure, what to use now

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