Dropbox: Get Read / Write EncFS Support On Android Using Cryptonite

Dropbox is very popular - and for a good reason - it's fast, you get free storage space which can easily be increased, there are many additional tools that make use of Dropbox and so on, but unfortunately it doesn't encrypt the data on your computer. This is why, a while back I was suggesting to encrypt private Dropbox data using EncFS.

But what if you want to access an encrypted folder from an Android device? You can use BoxCryptor, but it has some limitations: the free version has read-only access so you can't upload / modify files, only the first two encrypted folder levels are accessible (deeper folders can't be accessed) and has limited EncFS support (you have to use custom EncFS settings to be able to use it).

Well, a new Android application has been released recently, solving all these issues: Cryptonite EncFS.

Cryptonite EncFS is still in alpha, but it can already read / write on existing Dropbox EncFS volumes (the upload feature is experimental, but it worked just fine in my test) and has full EncFS support, so there's no need for special EncFS configuration. Oh, and it's free software.

Further more, on rooted phones that support FUSE, like CyanogenMod, Cryptonite can also mount EncFS volumes (root is not required for using Cryptonite EncFS with Dropbox).

The application is very easy to use: you click a button to link your Dropbox account and then you can decrypt and browse EncFS folders in your Dropbox. Cryptonite then lets you export or directly open the encrypted files you select and you can also upload files to your Dropbox EncFS folder(s):

Browsing an EncFS volume on Dropbox

You can directly open or export files in EncFS volumes

Download Cryptonite EncFS:

Direct Market link

For source code or bug reports, see the Cryptonite EncFS Google Code page.

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Marlin (elementary File Browser) Gets Dropbox And UbuntuOne Plugins

Marlin, the new file browser developed by ammonkey (who's also behind Nautilus elementary) for elementary OS, got two new plugins for Dropbox and Ubuntu One.

This means you can now get a public link or easily access previous revisions in Dropbox or publish/share and synchronize external folders in Ubuntu One using Marlin, just like you can using Nautilus:

Install Marlin and Dropbox / Ubuntu One Plugins

The new plugins, along with Marlin and other experimental packages are available in a new Marlin daily PPA.

Important: this PPA provides unstable packages and should only be used for testing.

If you want to test Marlin as well as the new Ubuntu One / Dropbox plugins in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:marlin-devs/marlin-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install marlin marlin-plugin-dropbox marlin-plugin-ubuntuone

Or you can use Glimpse to try it out.


Once installed, you need to enable the new plugins under Settings > Plugins:

And finally, restart Marlin.

If you're not using Ubuntu 11.10, you can get the latest Marlin as well as the new plugins via BZR.

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Dropbox Share Updated For Ubuntu 11.10 [Fedora Installation Instructions Too]

Dropbox Share is now available for Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. This is a tool I've created a while back to easily share files or folders using Dropbox and automatically copy their public links to the clipboard.

Dropbox Share comes with a custom Unity launcher as well as two Nautilus scripts (so you don't have to use Unity to run Dropbox Share):

- custom Unity launcher (works with docks too!): just drag and drop some file(s) or folder(s) onto the launcher and a simbolic link is created into your public Dropbox folder (and thus, it doesn't use the double amount of disk space like it would do if you'd copy the files). The public share links are automatically copied to the clipboard so you can easily share it with your friends, etc:

- Two Nautilus scripts to share and unshare files - they work just like the Unity launcher, but work in Nautilus and don't require Unity or a dock:

Further more, Dropbox Share also adds an emblem to the shared files so you know which files you've shared. And even if you remove a file manually (without using the unshare script) from your public Dropbox folder, the emblems will be correctly updated the next time you share a file thanks to a history of shared files that's built into Dropbox Share.

Also, like I said, Unity Dropbox Share also works with docks such as Avant Window Navigator, Cairo Dock or Docky - just drag the icon to the dock and then drag and drop files to share them using Dropbox. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with DockBarX.


Besides Ubuntu Oneiric support, the latest Dropbox Share 0.5.5 also comes with a new feature: Unity quicklist to re-copy the URL for the last shared file as well as bug fixes.

Here are two old videos demoing Dropbox Share:

- Dropbox Share Nautilus scripts:




- Unity Dropbox Share (Unity launcher):

Install Dropbox Share in Ubuntu

Before proceeding, make sure you've installed Dropbox!


1. Dropbox Share is available in the main WebUpd8 PPA, for Ubuntu 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04. Add the PPA and update the software sources using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update

2. 

Now, install Dropbox Share (Nautilus scripts):

sudo apt-get install dropbox-share

To also install Unity Dropbox Share (custom Unity launcher), use the following command:

sudo apt-get install unity-dropbox-share

The Unity Dropbox Share icon isn't automatically added to your Unity launcher so you'll have to add it manually it: open Nautilus and navigate to /opt/unity-dropbox-share/, then drag and drop the icon to the Unity launcher or Cairo Dock, AWN, Docky, etc.

Now you can share files or folders using Dropbox by right clicking in Nautilus and selecting Scripts > Dropbox Share or by drag'n'drop onto the custom launcher.

Install Dropbox Share in Fedora

Please note that the emblems do not work in Fedora 15 due to a bug in Nautilus 3 which doesn't read file emblems from metadata (the bug has been fixed in Nautilus 3.1.92 which is in Oneiric).

You firstly need to install Dropbox (obviously)!

1. Install the required dependencies:

sudo yum install libnotify xclip xautomation gvfs libsqlite3x python bzr

2. Download and install Dropbox Share:

cd
bzr branch lp:dropbox-share
sudo cp dropbox-share/bin/* /usr/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/{dropbox-index,openpublicfolder,recopy-url,unity-dropbox-share}
mkdir -p ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts
cp dropbox-share/{"Dropbox Share","Dropbox Unshare"} ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
sudo mkdir -p /opt/unity-dropbox-share
sudo cp dropbox-share/etc/* /opt/unity-dropbox-share
rm -r dropbox-share

If you want to use the Dropbox Share launcher in a dock such as AWN or Docky, open Nautilus and go to /opt/unity-dropbox-share and drag the Unity Dropbox Share icon onto a dock.

Now you can share files/folders using Dropbox by right clicking them in Nautilus and selecting Scripts > Dropbox Share or by drag'n'drop onto the custom launcher.

Report any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.

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Dropbox: Access EncFS Folders On Android Using BoxCryptor

A while back we wrote about encrypting your private Dropbox data using EncFS. And that's a really great way to keep your private Dropbox data safe, but what if you want to access some encrypted files from an Android device?

That's where BoxCryptor comes in. The first public BoxCryptor version for Android was released a few days ago so you can finally access EncFS folders in your Dropbox from any Android device (there's also a BoxCryptor version for Windows and an iPhone / iPad app is currently under development). The application is currently in alpha and for now it can only read encrypted files, but according to it's Android Market page, write support will be added in a later version.

BoxCryptor is great, but there are a few quirks. Firstly, BoxCryptor doesn't have full EncFS support so you have to disable some of the default EncFS options to be able to use it (instructions available in the second part of this post). And secondly, in our Dropbox EncFS post, we wrote about excluding the encryption key from getting synced. Well, to be able to use BoxCryptor, you must sync the EncFS key too.

Also, the Windows version of BoxCryptor is free for an encrypted directory with a maximum size of 2GB and you must pay for more. There's nothing about this on the BoxCryptor Android Market page so I assume it's completely free for Android, but I'm not sure, so if you have a large ( >2GB) encrypted directory, let us know if BoxCryptor for Android works for you!

But this is the first public release so hopefully BoxCryptor will get full EncFS support by the time it reaches a stable status.  Oh, and BoxCryptor does offer an extra layer of security: you can set a PIN for unlocking the application.

Here are a few BoxCryptor screenshots:


- The first time you run it, you must select your encrypted folder (".encrypted" in my case):

- Once you select a folder and enter your EncFS password, you can easily open any files available in that folder:

BoxCryptor options:

How to set up EncFS to work with BoxCryptor

To create an EncFS folder under Linux that is supported by BoxCryptor, follow the instructions in our Encrypt Your Private Dropbox Data With EncFS post, but after running the command in step 2, enter "x" for expert configuration mode and set the following options like below:

The following filename encoding algorithms are available:
1. Block : Block encoding, hides file name size somewhat
2. Null : No encryption of filenames
3. Stream : Stream encoding, keeps filenames as short as possible

--> enter "3".

Enable filename initialization vector chaining?
--> enter "no"

Enable per-file initialization vectors?
--> enter "no"

Enable block authentication code headers on every block in a file?
--> enter "no"

Add random bytes to each block header?
--> enter "0"

And finally, skip the last step in our previous post which excludes the EncFS key from being synced.

Download BoxCryptor for Android:

Or use this direct Android Market link.

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Firefox 5 Beta 5 Available In The Ubuntu Natty Proposed Repo, Nautilus-Dropbox Available In Oneiric And Debian

A quick update... well, actually two:

- Firefox 5.0 beta 5 is now available in the Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal official "Proposed" repository which means that the final Firefox 5.0 version will probably be available in the main repositories after it's released (if there aren't any issues with the package that's currently in the proposed repo).

- Nautilus-Dropbox is now available in the official Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot repositories as well as in Debian Unstable / Experimental. So starting with Oneiric, you won't have to manually download and install Dropbox, you can simply search for it and install it via the Ubuntu Software Center.

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Encrypt Your Private Dropbox Data With EncFS

Dropbox is great but the data is not encrypted on your computer (you can read more about this here). There are various ways to encrypt some private files in your Dropbox folder: you can use Truecript, EncFS, SecretSync (now available for Linux too) etc.

- Truecrypt is great, but to use it with Dropbox you must manually unmout the filesystem to get it to sync which is kind of against the whole Dropbox idea. For those who don't mind having to manually unmount the filesystem to get it to sync, this is probably a better solution (because Truecrypt is very easy to set up on any OS: Linux, Windows or Mac).

- SecretSync is a new tool to encrypt some files in your Dropbox folder. While it works great (though there's currently a bug in the Linux version the bug in the Linux version has been fixed) and is cross-platform, it's no different than Dropbox because the encryption keys are not stored on your computer but on their server. But of course, it does add an extra security layer so you can check this out too!

So the best way to encrypt your Dropbox files is probably using EncFS. EncFS is very easy to configure and doesn't require manually mounting or unmounting the filesystem.

EncFS works on Linux as well as Mac through macfuse or Windows using BoxCryptor. There might be other ways of getting it to work under Windows but I don't use Windows so you're on your own here.

To be able to access some files using your Android phone, etc., you can only encrypt your private files and leave others unencrypted and that's what I'll be using in the instructions below but if you want, you can of course encrypt your whole Dropbox folder.

Here's how this works:

- files under ~/Dropbox/.encrypted are encrypted
- files under ~/Private are not encrypted

You place the private files you want to sync in the ~/Private folder and they are then automatically encrypted under ~/Dropbox/.encrypted and synced with Dropbox.

Here's a screenshot too:

(The files you see on the left (under ~/Dropbox/.encrypted/) are the encrypted version of the files on the right (which are under ~/Private))

Even though there are 2 folders, only the encrypted files are stored on your disk and when you access the plaintext files in EncFS, the files are decrypted (or encrypted) on-the-fly. So you won't need extra disk space for this.

(thanks to Robert Freudenreich - the BoxCryptor developer - for this info)

Set up an EncFS folder and sync it with Dropbox (in Linux w/ GNOME)*

1. Install EncFS:

sudo apt-get install encfs

2. To create a new encrypted volume, run:

encfs ~/Dropbox/.encrypted ~/Private

And follow the instructions. Selecting "p" should be enough ("pre-configured paranoia mode") but if you know what you're doing, you can of course select the advanced mode.

If you've used different folder names, adapt the command above to your folders.

3. Now let's use GNOME-EncFS to store the password in the keyring and automatically mount the encrypted folder at startup.

Download GNOME-EncFS, extract it somewhere - lets say in your home directory, rename its folder to "gnome-encfs" (so it's easier to follow the instructions below) and use a terminal to navigate to its directory. If you've renamed the folder like I said and placed it in your home directory, use the following command:

cd ~/gnome-encfs

Now to install it, run:

sudo install gnome-encfs /usr/local/bin

And finally, run:

gnome-encfs -a ~/Dropbox/.encrypted ~/Private

Again, replacing the paths with whatever folders you've used. This command will ask for your EncFS password and if you want it to mount at login - make sure you select "yes".

And you're done. Now the files you place in the ~/Private folder will be mirrored under ~/Dropbox/.encrypted, synchronized and encrypted.

For your 2nd, 3rd, etc. computer running Ubuntu, follow these steps again. For Windows you can use BoxCryptor and macfuse for Mac. Unfortunately I don't use Windows or Mac so I can't help you configuring them.

Optional: exclude the EncFS key from being synced

You can set Dropbox not to sync your EncFS key if you want. But by doing this, you'll have to manually copy the key on the 2nd, 3rd computer, etc. in the ~/Dropbox/.encrypted folder.

1. Copy the key from ~/Dropbox/.encrypted folder somewhere safe. The key is called ".encfs6.xml" and is a hidden file so press CTRL + H to see it.

2. Run the following command to get Dropbox to ignore your EncFS key:

dropbox exclude add ~/Dropbox/.encrypted/.encfs6.xml

In my test, the ~/Dropbox/.encrypted/.encfs6.xml file was deleted after running the above command but since you've copied it somewhere else (step 1), you can now copy the ".encfs6.xml" file back to ~/Dropbox/.encrypted/

3. Open the Dropbox site and delete the .encrypted/.encfs6.xml file.

Update: also see -> how to access EncFS Dropbox folders on Android (these instructions should work for Windows too).

* Instructions tested on Ubuntu 11.04 32bit.

Post inspired by:

• Pragmattica
• Dropbox TipsAndTricks -> IncreasePrivacyAndSafety

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