portably encrypting a file system's partition, directory and/or file

Hi *,

I have firewire and USB devices with partitions/logical drives, whole
directories and/or files I would like to encrypt. The thing is that I
need to be able to just plug in the thing on any x86 machine running a
commercial OS that would just take it (and AFAIK the only filesystem
that even a MAC would seamlessly 'mount' is vfat/FAT32)

is there anyway to do that?

I have read quite a bit about it and I still don't find exactly what I
need.

Also, why exactly does encryption belong in the kernel? I think once
you make it a kernel-depending functionality 'portability' to other OS
goes out the window

Are there libraries out there (of course, preferably OSS ones) which
you could compile for different OS and have access to pluggable
devices?

I crossposted this message becuase, to me, these portability and security
issues naturally reach out into different subject areas

Also, google was a little 'temperamental' when I was trying to post this
message

thanx
otf

news

In alt.computer.security news <> wrote:
> Hi *,
>
> I have firewire and USB devices with partitions/logical drives, whole
> directories and/or files I would like to encrypt. The thing is that I
> need to be able to just plug in the thing on any x86 machine running a
> commercial OS that would just take it (and AFAIK the only filesystem
> that even a MAC would seamlessly 'mount' is vfat/FAT32)
>
> is there anyway to do that?
>
> I have read quite a bit about it and I still don't find exactly what I
> need.
>
> Also, why exactly does encryption belong in the kernel? I think once
> you make it a kernel-depending functionality 'portability' to other OS
> goes out the window
>
> Are there libraries out there (of course, preferably OSS ones) which
> you could compile for different OS and have access to pluggable
> devices?
>
> I crossposted this message becuase, to me, these portability and security
> issues naturally reach out into different subject areas
>
> Also, google was a little 'temperamental' when I was trying to post this
> message
>
> thanx
> otf

Obviously, if you're looking at encrypted filesystems the encryption
should be in the filesystem layer, which is part of the kernel on pretty
much every mainstream OS out there.

There are many ways to do this, and quite a few that actually work, and
since only a few people use encrypted filesystems on different hosts,
there's little reason for standardization.

I'd recommend you to use an OpenPGP application (GnuPG?) and some
portable archiving format. Be sure to scrub whatever disk you worked on
when done.

Joachim

jKILLSPAM.schipper@math.uu.nl