Encrypted USB drive in Ubuntu

Today I went to the Linuxforum BOF day where I attended a session about encrypting your personal files. This made me remember a post read some time ago (check out the screen cast). I guessed that this functionality would be in Ubuntu Edgy by now so I just went ahead and tried to make my USB pen drive encrypted.

This is how I did it:

1. First install the needed software

   sudo apt-get install cryptsetup
   

2. Make sure your USB disk isn’t mounted. Then partition the USB pendrive the way you want it, if it isn’t already partitioned (I made one big partition on mine /dev/sda1).
   Note: Don’t mount the disk afterwards!
3. If you havn’t rebooted your computer since you installed the cryptsetup package, you might have to load the device mapper crypt module manually:

   sudo modprobe dm-crypt
   

4. Now make the partition encrypted:

   $ sudo cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sda1
   
   WARNING!
   ========
   This will overwrite data on /dev/sda1 irrevocably.
   
   Are you sure? (Type uppercase yes): YES
   Enter LUKS passphrase:
   Verify passphrase:
   Command successful.
   

   If you get the error:

   Failed to setup dm-crypt key mapping.
   Check kernel for support for the aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 cipher spec and verify that /dev/sda1 contains at least 133 sectors.
   

   Make sure that the disk isn’t mounted. And make sure you are using the right device. You can use dmesg to check which device the disk have been assigned. You might also wanna check that the the module dm-crypt is loaded (lsmod | grep dm).

5. Now attach the encrypted partition.:

   $ sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 sda1
   Enter LUKS passphrase:
   key slot 0 unlocked
   Command successful.
   

6. Now create a filesystem on the new encryptet device:

   sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/sda1
   

7. Remove the tempoary device mapped to the encrypted partition:

   sudo cryptsetup luksClose sda1
   

8. Now remove the your usbdisk from the USB plug, and reinsert it and Ubuntu should find it and ask for the passphrase.

In this Article, Microsoft suggests placing taxes on Internet usage to fix security breaches…

Unbelievable. Microsoft produces Windows, which has been security ridden since it first entered the Internet. Microsoft has been pay VERY well for their product. Microsoft has not fixed their problems. Now Microsoft want the consumer to play extra taxes to help fix their problem.

I have another idea:

How about we dump the Microsoft garbage and just use Linux/Unix/BSD based Operating systems, and eliminate 90% of those security threats in a single stroke.

How do them guys sleep at night?

The terms that they use, but what they REALLY mean:

“New”
means
“Different colours from previous version.”

“All New”
means
“Not compatible with previous version.”

“Exclusive”
means
“Nobody else has documentation.”

“Unmatched”
means
“Almost as good as the competition.”

“Design Simplicity”
means
“The company wouldn’t give us any money.”

“Fool-proof Operation”
means
“All parameters are hard-coded.”

“Advanced Design”
means
“Nobody really understands it.”

“Here At Last”
means
“Didn’t get it done on time.”

“Field Tested”
means
“We don’t have any simulators.”

“Years of Development”
means
“Finally got one to work.”

“Unprecedented Performance”
means
“Nothing ever ran this slow before.”

“Revolutionary”
means
“Disk drives go ’round and ’round.”

“Futuristic”
means
“Only runs on a next generation supercomputer.”

“No Maintenance”
means
“Impossible to fix.”

“Performance Proven”
means
“Worked through Beta test.”

“Meets Tough Quality Standards”
means
“It compiles without errors.”

“Satisfaction Guaranteed”
means
“We’ll send you another pack if it fails.”

“Stock Item”
means
“We shipped it before and can do it again.”