BoxCryptor 1.0 released

In response to the latest security issue of Dropbox (e.g. here, here and here), we have just released the official 1.0 version of BoxCryptor. In this version some bugs (nothing to worry about) have been fixed and BoxCryptor now supports files larger than 2 GB.

The most important improvement is the availability of BoxCryptor Portable! Because the integration as a virtual drive requires to install a virtual file system driver, the Portable version is a seperate program and works a little bit different. When you start BoxCryptor Portable and open an encrypted folder, the folder contents are shown in BoxCryptor Portable and you can encrypt or decrypt files by dragging and dropping them in or out of BoxCryptor Portable. You can also directly open files by double clicking them. BoxCryptor Portable then decrypts the file, stores it in a temporary folder and opens it with the default program.

BoxCryptor Portable works great with DropboxPortableAHK and can be used on every Windows computer (with .NET installed) without installation and without admin rights. Tip: If you use a foreign computer and only need access to one (or a few) specific encrypted files, you can download these encrypted files from Dropbox’ web interface together with the .encfs6.xml configuration file located in the root of your encrypted folder. After downloading these files to a folder, you can open it with BoxCryptor Portable and access the downloaded files in plaintext.

Click here to download BoxCryptor v1.0

Click here to download the latest version of BoxCryptor

 

Click here to download BoxCryptor Portable v1.0

Click here to download the latest version of BoxCryptor Portable

BoxCryptor Portable has the same restrictions as the regular BoxCryptor which means that the Free version can only be used with encrypted directories up to 2 GB in size. If you already have purchased BoxCryptor Unlimited, you can use the same serial number for BoxCryptor Portable.

PS: With the official 1.0 release, our introductory price of the beta phase ended and we have slightly elevated the prices for BoxCryptor Unlimited Personal and Unlimited Business.

How to use BoxCryptor with EncFS on Mac OS X

UPDATE 08/04/2011:
We have released an easy, “one-click” EncFS installer for Mac OS X!

UPDATE 05/07/2012:
We have released a first beta of BoxCryptor for Mac OS X! You can find more information in our forums.  

If you use BoxCryptor to encrypt (parts of) your Dropbox folder, an USB stick or an external harddisk and want to share the encrypted data with a computer running Linux or Mac OS X, a great feature of BoxCryptor is the compatibility with EncFS, an open-source cryptographic filesystem. As EncFS had some security issues in previous version, a prerequisite is to have EncFS version >= 1.7 installed.

Many tutorials (e.g. here and here) for EncFS on Mac OS X use a pre-built binary of EncFS provided by the EncFSVault project. Unfortunately, this binary is a very old version of EncFS (1.3.2) and can not be used together with BoxCryptor.  After describing how to install the latest EncFS version 1.7.4 on Ubuntu, I’m now going to show how to do it on Mac OS X.

1. Install XCode

Because we compile EncFS ourselves, we need the development tools (e.g. gcc compiler) provided by XCode. XCode should be located in the “Optional Installs” folder of your Mac OS X install DVD. Alternatively you can download the latest XCode 4 (which costs US-$4.99) or the free XCode 3 which also works (free registration as an Apple Developer is required).

2. Install MacFUSE

EncFS requires MacFUSE which allows you to extend Mac OS X via 3rd-party file systems. Download MacFUSE and install it by executing the downloaded MacFUSE.pkg

3. Install Homebrew

In order to install UNIX tools on Mac OS X we have to install Homebrew by executing the following command in a Terminal:

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

4. Install EncFS

Now we’re finally ready to compile and install EncFS 1.7.4 on our Mac. It is as simple as executing the following command in a Terminal. Homebrew downloads the sources of EncFS and a few dependencies and compiles and installs them. This may take some time.

$ brew install encfs

5.a Mount the encrypted folder in Terminal

If you don’t need a graphical interface to mount and unmount folders with EncFS, you can now mount the folder encrypted by BoxCryptor (e.g. ~/Dropbox/BoxCryptor) to a folder where we can access the decrypted, plaintext files (e.g. ~/BoxCryptor). Execute the following command in a Terminal and enter the correct password. Then skip to section 6.

$ encfs ~/Dropbox/BoxCryptor ~/BoxCryptor

5.b Mount the encrypted folder in MacFusion

MacFusion is a nice graphical interface to mount and unmount FUSE based file systems. Just download the latest version from the website and start the downloaded application. MacFusion only has built-in support for SSHFS and FTPFS, so we need to also install the EncFS plugin for MacFusion. Exit MacFusion again, download the EncFS plugin and install it by executing the downloaded installer.

When the installation finished, start MacFusion and add a new EncFS configuration by clicking the “Plus”-sign in left bottom corner and selecting EncFS. Select the folder encrypted by BoxCryptor (e.g. ~/Dropbox/BoxCryptor) as EncFS Raw Path and enter the correct password. Now switch to the Macfusion tab, choose a Mount Point (e.g. ~/BoxCryptor), a Volume Name and click “OK”.

Now, press the “Mount” button and allow keychain access!

6. That’s it! You can now encrypt and decrypt files from BoxCryptor with EncFS on Mac OS X! Happy (secure) syncin’ with Dropbox and all the other cloud storage services like iCloud/MobileMe or SugarSync!

$ ls -l ~/Dropbox/BoxCryptor/total 936-rw-r--r--@ 1 johndoe  staff      54 Jun 18 11:35 63eqwtqnPrYTxo5w-rw-r--r--  1 johndoe  staff   12189 Jun  1 08:26 QZBwXnE4j03EpIOcuwLYqDJn-rw-r--r--@ 1 johndoe  staff  436905 Jun 18 08:33 TUquvDfx,mbDANmrUz7-rw-r--r--  1 johndoe  staff    6148 Jun 19 07:42 dqtqUfXDfEF,rJ7-rw-r--r--  1 johndoe  staff   14302 May 31 04:54 elNypUIWyvE2CR4b-29drwxr-xr-x  4 johndoe  staff     136 Jun 19 08:05 gQ,Q9tc3A,8Hdrwxrwxrwt@ 3 johndoe  staff     102 Jun 18 11:30 s6uASun6QdAbheRWg45Ai13$ ls -l ~/BoxCryptor/total 928drwxr-xr-x  4 johndoe  staff     136 Jun 19 08:05 Finance-rw-r--r--  1 johndoe  staff   12189 Jun  1 08:26 Launch plan.xlsx-rw-r--r--  1 johndoe  staff   14302 May 31 04:54 Meeting.docx-rw-r--r--@ 1 johndoe  staff  436905 Jun 18 08:33 Product.pptx-rw-r--r--@ 1 johndoe  staff      54 Jun 18 11:35 Readme.txt

UPDATE 08/04/2011:
We have released an easy, “one-click” EncFS installer for Mac OS X!

UPDATE 05/07/2012:
We have released a first beta of BoxCryptor for Mac OS X! You can find more information in our forums.