10 Best File and Disk Encryption Tools for Linux

It wasn’t too long ago that we published a list of 10 cool command line tools for your Linux terminal. Today, we turn our focus to encryption methods as we bring you a list of the best file and disk encryption software for your Linux machine.

1. Tomb

Tomb is a free and open source tool for easily encrypting and backing up files on GNU/Linux systems. It consists of a simple shell script that implements standard GNU tools alongside cryptsetup and LUKS (the Linux kernel’s cryptographic API).

Tomb aims to improve safety by adopting a handful of well-tested standards and implementations, applying good practices for key storage, and a minimalist design consisting of concise readable code.

Learn more about Tomb encryption software from our review here.

Create a New Tomb

2. Cryptmount

Cryptmount is an open source utility created for GNU/Linux Operating Systems to enable users to mount encrypted files without root privileges.

It works using the newer devmapper mechanism which offers several advantages including improved functionality in the kernel, support for encrypted swap partitions for superusers, support for crypto-swap at system boot, storing multiple encrypted filesystems in a single disk, etc.

Learn more about Cryptmount from our review here.

Create Encrypted Filesystem in Linux

3. CryFS

CryFS is a free and open source cloud-based encryption tool for safely storing files anywhere. It is easy to set up, runs in the background, and works nicely with any popular cloud service not excluding Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud.

CryFS ensures that no data, including directory structure, metadata, and file content, leave your computer in an unencrypted format.

4. GnuPG

GnuPG, often referred to as GPG, stands for GNU Privacy Guard and it is a free and open source collection of cryptographic tools created as a replacement for Symantec’s PGP cryptographic software suite.

It is compliant with the IETF standards-track specification of OpenPGP and RFC 4889. We have covered GPG in a little more detail here.

Encrypt File in Linux

5. VeraCrypt

VeraCrypt is a multi-platform, freeware open source tool created to provide users with on-the-fly encryption. You can use it to encrypt entire storage devices or only selected partitions using pre-boot authentication.

VeraCrypt’s features include the ability to create virtual encrypted disks and mount them as if they’re real, provision of plausible deniability, pipelining and parallelization, etc.

6. EncFS

EncFS is a free and mostly open source tool for mounting EncFS folders on Mac and Windows. You can use it to create, edit, change and export the password of EncFS folders and it is 100% compatible with EncFS 1.7.4 on GNU/Linux platforms.

7. 7-zip

7-zip is a popular, free and mostly open source multi-platform file archiving utility for compressing files (or file groups) into containers referred to as archives.

7-zip is among the most popular archiving utilities because of its high compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression’s, plugin for FAR manager, integration with Windows Shell, AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats, among other features.

8. dm-crypt

dm-crypt is a disk encryption subsystem for encrypting disks, partitions, and portable containers. It was created to address certain reliability problems in cryptoloop and can be used to back up several volume types.

9. ecryptfs

eCryptfs is a free and open source all-in-one collection of software for disk encryption on Linux. It aims to mirror GnuPG’s functionality by implementing a POSIX-compliant filesystem-level encryption layer and it is been part of the Linux kernel since its 2.6.19 version release.

ecryptfs is cool because you can use it to encrypt directories and partitions irrespective of their underlying file system.

10. cryptsetup

cryptsetup is an open source utility created to enable users easily encrypt files based on the DMCrypt kernel module with emphasis on LUKS design.

LUKS stands for Linux Unified Key Setup and has since become the standard for Linux hard disk encryption thanks to its ability to facilitate distro compatibility, seamless data transport and/or migration, and secure management of multiple user passwords.

How useful are encryption tools to you and which utilities are your favourite to use? Feel free to drop your comments, questions, and suggestions below.

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7 Tools to Encrypt/Decrypt and Password Protect Files in Linux

Encryption is the process of encoding files in such a way that only those who are authorized can access it. Mankind is using encryption from ages even when computers were not in existence. During war they would pass some kind of message that only their tribe or those who are concerned were able to understand.

Linux distribution provides a few standard encryption/decryption tools that can prove to be handy at times. Here in this article we have covered 7 such tools with proper standard examples, which will help you to encrypt, decrypt and password protect your files.

If you are interested in knowing how to generate Random password in Linux as well as creating random password you may like to visit the below link:

1. GnuPG

GnuPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard and is often called as GPG which is a collection of cryptographic software. Written by GNU Project in C programming Language. Latest stable release is 2.0.27.

In most of the today’s Linux distributions, the gnupg package comes by default, if in-case it’s not installed you may apt or yum it from repository.

We have a text file (tecmint.txt) located at

/Desktop/Tecmint/, which will be used in the examples that follows this article.

Before moving further, check the content of the text file.

Now encrypt tecmint.txt file using gpg. As soon as you run the gpc command with option -c (encryption only with symmetric cipher) it will create a file texmint.txt.gpg. You may list the content of the directory to verify.

Note: Enter Paraphrase twice to encrypt the given file. The above encryption was done with CAST5 encryption algorithm automatically. You may specify a different algorithm optionally.

To see all the encryption algorithm present you may fire.

Now, if you want to decrypt the above encrypted file, you may use the following command, but before we start decrypting we will first remove the original file i.e., tecmint.txt and leave the encrypted file tecmint.txt.gpg untouched.

Note: You need to provide the same password you gave at encryption to decrypt when prompted.

2. bcrypt

bcrypt is a key derivation function which is based upon Blowfish cipher. Blowfish cipher is not recommended since the time it was figured that the cipher algorithm can be attacked.

If you have not installed bcrypt, you may apt or yum the required package.

Encrypt the file using bcrypt.

As soon as you fire the above command, a new file name texmint.txt.bfe is created and original file tecmint.txt gets replaced.

Decrypt the file using bcrypt.

Note: bcrypt do not has a secure form of encryption and hence it’s support has been disabled at least on Debian Jessie.

3. ccrypt

Designed as a replacement of UNIX crypt, ccrypt is an utility for files and streams encryption and decryption. It uses Rijndael cypher.

If you have not installed ccrypt you may apt or yum it.

Encrypt a file using ccrypt. It uses ccencrypt to encrypt and ccdecrypt to decrypt. It is important to notice that at encryption, the original file (tecmint.txt) is replaced by (tecmint.txt.cpt) and at decryption the encrypted file (tecmint.txt.cpt) is replaced by original file (tecmint.txt). You may like to use ls command to check this.

Provide the same password you gave during encryption to decrypt.

4. Zip

It is one of the most famous archive format and it is so much famous that we generally call archive files as zip files in day-to-day communication. It uses pkzip stream cipher algorithm.

If you have not installed zip you may like to apt or yum it.

Create a encrypted zip file (several files grouped together) using zip.

Here mypassword is the password used to encrypt it. A archive is created with the name tecmint.zip with zipped files tecmint.txt, tecmint1.txt and tecmint2.txt.

Decrypt the password protected zipped file using unzip.

You need to provide the same password you provided at encryption.

5. Openssl

Openssl is a command line cryptographic toolkit which can be used to encrypt message as well as files.

You may like to install openssl, if it is not already installed.

Encrypt a file using openssl encryption.

Explanation of each option used in the above command.

1. enc : encryption
2. -aes-256-cbc : the algorithm to be used.
3. -in : full path of file to be encrypted.
4. -out : full path where it will be decrypted.

Decrypt a file using openssl.

6. 7-zip

The very famous open source 7-zip archiver written in C++ and able to compress and uncompress most of the known archive file format.

If you have not installed 7-zip you may like to apt or yum it.

Compress files into zip using 7-zip and encrypt it.

Decompress encrypted zip file using 7-zip.

Note: Provide same password throughout in encryption and decryption process when prompted.

All the tools we have used till now are command based. There is a GUI based encryption tool provided by nautilus, which will help you to encrypt/decrypt files using Graphical interface.

7. Nautilus Encryption Utility

Steps to encrypt files in GUI using Nautilus encryption utility.

Encryption of file in GUI

1. Right click the file you want to encrypt.

2. Select format to zip and provide location to save. Provide password to encrypt as well.

Encrypt File Using Nautilus

3. Notice the message – encrypted zip created successfully.

Encrypted Zip File Confirmation

Decryption of file in GUI

1. Try opening the zip in GUI. Notice the LOCK-ICON next to file. It will prompt for password, Enter it.

Decryption of File

2. When successful, it will open the file for you.

Decryption Confirmation

That’s all for now. I’ll be here again with another interesting topic. Till then stay tuned and connected to Tecmint. Don’t forget to provide us with your valuable feedback in the comments below. Like and share us and help us get spread.

If You Appreciate What We Do Here On TecMint, You Should Consider:

TecMint is the fastest growing and most trusted community site for any kind of Linux Articles, Guides and Books on the web. Millions of people visit TecMint! to search or browse the thousands of published articles available FREELY to all.

If you like what you are reading, please consider buying us a coffee ( or 2 ) as a token of appreciation.

We are thankful for your never ending support.