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Some days ago i have encrypted my home thanks to ecryptfs-utils.
Now i have a big doubt regarding deja-dup and the future backup:

  • can i backup the files that are in my home folder?
  • will they be backupped encrypted or non encrypted?

(i have to write something else otherwise i cannot post this question..excuse me for this)

thanks in advance!

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3 Answers 3

Your home is unlocked once you login to your account, not before. Once that is done your files are on-the-fly un-encrypted and ready to be read by the backup utility.

When you then back them up with deja-dup you are actually copying the information un-encrypted and saving it to the archive, there is also the option to encrypt the backup with a password, but that has nothing to do with ecryptfs.

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Deja-dup is risking your security. Luckily the chances of an actual security violation occurring are low, but the possibility exists. Deja-dup backs up your files once they are unencrypted and then re-encrypts them with another kind of encryption.

You will have two copies of the same data in different encryption. Knowing this, a cryptoanalyst could use sophisticated pattern analysis to compare the two copies and find out what they are -- bypassing the encryption of both.

Another possibility is that one of the two encryptions may be weaker, even weak enough to partially reveal the content of your data, giving a cryptoanalyst clues to decrypt both copies.

It's even more unlikely, but an infiltrator could modify your local copy of Deja-dup to transmit the unencrypted data before re-encrypting it.

Backintime can be configured to back up your encrypted home directory as-is, from /home/.ecryptfs/user without even knowing what it's backing up.

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You should be able to back up as normal as long as the ecryptfs container is unlocked and open at the time so that deja-dup can access the files if you are not logged in at the time and the container is locked then I'm not sure.

If it backs up while the container is open then they wont be encrypted at least not by ecryptfs, you can have deja-dup encrypt the backup archives has been a while since I used it but if I recall correctly deja-dup supports GPG encryption.

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