How to Encrypt/Decrypt Files Using EncryptPad on Linux

Consider a situation where you need to share your important/sensitive data with your family or friends or your critical data is stored in forms of text files on your laptop; there are always chances of hacking or information theft. The solution to such issues is encryption, and thankfully we are living in the area where many such applications exist that provide encryption/decryption facility to some extent.

EncryptPad  is one such great application which stands out of the crowd of encryption/decryption apps as it offers enhanced level of security by encrypting files using both key file and passphrase. It acts like a small text editor but in a very secure way, you can not only encrypt text files with this application, you can encrypt binary files as well. It is a cross platform application and it works perfectly fine on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems. You do not need to worry that intended recipient of your sensitive information will be unable to decrypt files, as this utility works on almost all popular and most widely used operating systems. In this article, we will be discussing its important features, installation process and usage.

Salient Features of EncryptPad

Here are some of the noteworthy feature of EncryptPad. It has already won the trust of users and accordingly to GitHub, more than 4000 users have downloaded this utility so far. Lets review its important features and then we will show you how to install and use this utility.

• It provided highest level of security by combining both security mechanisms ; passphrase and key file.
• It has "Readonly" mode feature, which lets user prevent from accidental modification of data.
• It works via both commandline and graphical interfaces, so if you are using operating system which do not have GUI installed, you can still benefit from this little utility.
• It includes a customized passphrase generator, which generate stronger passphrase.
• Following is the list of cipher and hash algorithms being used by this utility.

CAST5, TripleDES, AES128, AES256 , SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512

• It makes use of best available open source compression utilities ZLIB and ZIP .
• Mac and Linux users can also use its portable version.
• It supports two encryption formates ; GPG and EPD .
• It supports well known Curl utility to download/wget key files stored at any remote locations.

Installing and Using EncryptPad on Ubuntu 16.10

Let's get started on its installation and usage process. Launch your system's terminal and run following command to add its PPA file to your Ubuntu system's APT-GET ( Package Manager) repository.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

It will ask you to confirm the addition of PPA to your repo files, just hit "Enter" once prompted. As soon as it completes, run following command to update your package manager.

sudo apt update

Now run following command to install this utility.

sudo apt install encryptpad encryptcli

It should hardly consume 40 MB of space on your system, confirm the download and installation by pressing "Y" and you should see the success message soon. As soon as the installation process is complete, you can locate it under main menu.

Once launched, here is the very first screen it will show you. Just like a text editor, it has a menu bar on the top and you can perform all operations from there.

First of all, lets generate a key and passphrase which we will use for all future encryption/decryption tasks. Click Encryption > Generate Key option from top menu and here is the window displayed. Select the path where you want to store this file and also specify new file name, you can also use "Key in repository" option which means EncryptPad will store the key in your home directory.

Enter passphrase for the key file on next step, confirm passphrase as well and you should be good to go then.

Now lets perform an encryption operation using the keyfile and passphrase we generate, open any text file in this editor and click the encryption icon as shown encircled in the following screenshot.

The following window will be displayed, under "Parameters" option choose "Encryption", under  "Format" option choose from either EPD or GPG (these two are encryption formats supported by this utility) , browse input file and specify the output file, enter passphrase and browse and provide the path to the key file. Click "Start" once done.

Hurrah! Your file has been encrypted now.

In order to decrypt files, you just need to choose "Decrypt" option under parameters. Specify Input, Output file ; browse and provide key file.

Click "Start" and it will ask you for passphrase.

Congratulations, your file has been decrypted now.

That's it, isn't it a pretty easy utility ? :)

Disclaimer: Please note that EncryptPad saves unencrypted text in memory so it is advised to be careful while using this utility. Due to this factor, it is recommended to close this utility after using it, as leaving it open might lead to some system resources being utilized in vain.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed the prominent features, installation and usage of EncryptPad utility to encrypt and decrypt files. It is an easy to use, freeware, cross platform utility which uses enhanced security techniques to ensure the safety of your critical data. It is under constant development stage and getting proper bug fixes/new features. We can hope to see a much improved EncryptPad in future, try it today and do let us know in comments about your experience with this utility.