Filesystem/Volume encryption has become paramount to the masses in the IT industry due to the varying advantages it presents including protection of sensitive data, military-grade encryption standards, password keys to prevent unwanted access, and an encrypted file/drive only the encryption software can access among others.
A few days back, we briefly reviewed Truecrypt as a secure software encryption tool.
The application has been discontinued and the latest version (7.2) has been termed as vulnerable; but then, an earlier version of the software (7.1a) has gone through auditing and has been proven to be secure enough for everyday use.
Veracrypt is another cross-platform and open-source on-the-fly encryption tool that was originally based off Truecrypt’s 7.1a codebase back in June 2013 but has since then matured greatly to become a singular encryption solution that is now dissimilar and incompatible with volumes encrypted with Truecrypt.
Veracrypt is essentially your goto option for an encryption tool if you’re looking to replace Truecrypt.
Installing Veracrypt in Linux
The installation of Veracrypt is pretty easy and downright straight forward. Before anything, you’ll need to download the Veracrypt compressed package for Linux systems, after which you’ll extract it and run “veracrypt-1.xx-setup-gui-x64” as a program from the extracted folder as seen in the image below.
On executing the installer, you’re prompted with the Veracrypt installer “veracrypt-1.xx-setup-gui-x64“.
veracrypt installer prompt
veracypt installer license
veracrypt install completed
At this point, the installation is complete. You’ll press the enter key to exit the Veracrypt setup. The next prompt you’ll see immediately afterwards is the uninstall dialog that basically gives you uninstall instructions. Should you be displeased with Veracrypt in the future, you can easily remove it by entering “veracrypt-uninstall.sh” in the terminal.
veracrypt uninstall
Choose depending on the size of files you want to save on the virtual drive.
volume options
Allocate disk space to your drive
volume size
Choose the filesystem for your drive
veracrypt filesystem options
Choose the directory at which you want to save your virtaul drive
volume location
Create a password for your virtual drive
volume password
veracrypt random pool
veracrypt formatting virtual drive
running veracrypt from console
Once you’ve set your encrypted volume up, there’s nothing more to do than mount it in Veracrypt whenever you need to.
veracypt drive password prompt
We hope you’ve found the installation instruction easy and straightforward? Should you run into any sort of problems, let us know in the comments below and we’ll reach back to you as soon as i can.
