Linux How To: Single-File Encryption with eCryptfs

No matter how many barriers you put up for hackers or out-and-out thieves, the single best way to ultimately stymie their efforts should yours fail is file encryption. After all, what good is pilfered data if they can't make sense of it?

Billed as an "enterprise-class cryptographic filesystem for Linux," eCryptfs is a native Linux filesystem with roots in Erez Zadok's Cryptfs. eCryptfs, however, adds key and policy management and takes a cue from GnuPG, in that "only the process of encrypting and decrypting the data is done transparently from the perspective of the application."

This DevX tutorial explores client- and server-side implementations of eCryptfs on Linux.