Encrypting a file name in linux?

Question

I'm trying to encrypt a file as well as its filename. Encrypting the file is fairly easy, I use gpg for that, but I can't figure out how to encrypt the filename as well. Would be great if the filename could be encrypted using the same key.

Any idea on how to do this?

`gpg` isn't an option for this as even short messages (e.g. filenames) will end up in quite long encrypted text that will be longer then 255 bytes (max filename length) for any useful key length. — Sven, May 17 '15 at 23:24

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 11 '20 at 10:02

2

ecryptfs.org

ecryptfs can encrypt both the file contents and the file names. It's the default home directory encryption scheme supported by Ubuntu.

edited Jun 11 '20 at 10:02

Community

1

answered Aug 26 '15 at 07:13

Luke Quinane

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 26 '15 at 08:08

If you are already using gpg, I would advise you the following process:

Create a directory with a meaningless name (eg. use mktemp -d).
Copy your file(s) into this directory.
Encrypt and compress the archive of this directory with gpg:
```
gpg-zip -c -o file.gpg dirname
```

You may want to write a shell script to automate this easily.

Encrypting a file name in linux?

2 Answers2

ecryptfs.org