How to configure EncFS on OSX 10.10 (Yosemite)
Posted on Sun 11 October 2015 in HowTo, OSX, Sicurezza • Tagged with cloud, encfs, encryption, OSX, security
With EncFS it's possible to keep our data in almost any cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive, etc...), having a good level of privacy and security. Infact EncFS encrypt and decrypt our data automatically. It's available for Linux as well and using a commercial solution (that is currently unsupported) even on Windows.
Installing EncFS
EncFS can be installed from brew. If you don't have brew package manager installed on OSX you can install it using this command:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
After brew, you need to install OSXFuse from this website http://osxfuse.github.io
Finally you can install encfs using this command:
brew install homebrew/fuse/encfs
Configuring the encrypted folder
Now that EncFS is installed, you can either mount an existing EncFS volume or create a new one. In both cases the command is the same:
encfs ~/Dropbox/Private ~/Private
If you are mounting an existing encrypted volume, you will be prompted for the password. If you are creating a new encrypted volume you will be asked some questions about EncFS parameters.
Note: if it's important for you to keep compatibility with BoxCryptor Classic (in case you want to use the same volume under Windows), please refer to this other article I wrote: https://www.andreagrandi.it/2014/09/12/create-an-encfs-volume-compatible-with-boxcryptor-classic/
Mount the encrypted volume on startup
First of all you need to save the volume's password inside the OSX keychain. Open the app Keychain Access and create a new entry with name encfs and account value encfs, then write your password and click Add:
Once the password is saved, open a text editor and paste this script and save it as encfs_mount.sh inside your \$HOME folder:
#!/bin/bash
# Secure EncFS Dropbox mounter by Daniel Widerin <[email protected]>
SOURCE=~/Dropbox/Private
TARGET=~/Private
VOLUME_TITLE=Private
KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD='encfs'
ENCFS=/usr/local/bin/encfs
mount | grep $TARGET >/dev/null
[[ "$?" -eq "0" ]] && /usr/sbin/diskutil unmount $TARGET
if [ ! -d $TARGET ]; then
echo "Create new mountpoint $TARGET"
mkdir $TARGET
chmod 0700 $TARGET
fi
$ENCFS $SOURCE $TARGET --extpass="security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-generic-password -gl '$KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD' |grep password|cut -d \\\" -f 2" -ovolname=$VOLUME_TITLE
Make it executable:
chmod +x ~/encfs_mount.sh
Open AppleScript editor and paste this text inside and save as an app in the \$HOME folder:
do shell script "$HOME/encfs_mount.sh"
Finally, open "System Preferences" -> "Users & Groups" and add the previously saved application.
Final notes
At this point encfs is configured to be mounted at startup and to save
the encrypted files inside Dropbox. Please note: do not save anything
directly on ~/Dropbox/Private, only read and save your files from
~/Private