Seamless encryption in Windows

[elzmaddy]

Hi, I am looking for some software that can provide seamless encryption of folders/files in Windows. You may wonder why I don't just use EFS. Well, let's say that someone either locally or possibly even remotely through a backdoor trojan for example -- was able to gain the functionality of my administrator account -- the data would be readable wouldn't it?

I have come across a few encryption utilities but they are cumbersome. For example, WinRAR 3 suits my needs in that I can add and delete files in the archive, and I can open files without extracting the encrypted archive. But what if i want to save a new document into the archive? I would have to save it to disk normally, drag and drop it into the archive file, and delete the original. There is also a quirk I discovered -- if I update the archive (modify/add a file), I must reapply a password by typing it in. Also, I have some syncing software where I'd like to sync directly into an encrypted folder.

It's not that bad, I can live with it -- but I wonder is there something better?

 

[Nothinman]

If someone can trojan your PC nothing on it is safe, they can do things like capture keystrokes to get your passphrase and steal your key.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Think about it: if it's seamless and allows your applications to just "save" to its folder / fake drive / whatever then it must be an EFS-type filesystem that provides file services to all applications including a backdoor / worm / virus.

Best you can do is an archiving application that only makes you re-type the password once per session. Be careful though, some archivers offer only very weak encryption (Zip for examle).

It would also be possible to automate save / load on an application-by-application basis into an encrypted archive by writing DLLs / components and some script code glue, but even then if the DLLs became widely used then a backdoor could include code to use the DLLs.

 

[sean2002]

I use drivecyypt 3.03, I have a 10.0GB encrypted partition using Blowfish with a 320bit key

 

[elzmaddy]

I see your point about the trojans -- I had not thought of that.

I would like to go with an encryption utility. WinRAR comes close, but I also observed that files cannot be modified. For example, an archive with doc files containing passwords cannot be updated via MS Word. I would have to extract it, modify it, add it again, reapply the password.

 

[Nothinman]

Use either PGP (there's a PGPDisk portion of it that does what you want) or EFS.