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So how do you access the hidden volume? When you mount the parent volume, you are required to enter a password (and potentially additional verifications, like a key file). To this end, you can have a parent encrypted volume filled with files that one would reasonably encrypt (personal correspondence, tax documents, client files, etc.) and then hidden and nested within it, an undetectable volume which houses the actual information you are unable or unwilling to reveal (the GPS coordinates of Jimmy Hoffa’s body, the recipe for Coca Cola, or your vacation photos from Area 51). After all if an unencrypted volume looks like random data and the free space on an unencrypted volume looks like random data, it’s simple to use that random data to hide an additional encrypted volume. Hidden volumes take advantage of this random data and use it as a cloak.

Files and empty space alike are uniformly random. There is no way, short of decrypting the contents of the volume, to reveal the contents. When you create a TrueCrypt volume, the entire volume appears, from outside the volume, like a giant block of random data.

Truecrypt alternative lifehacker how to#

In a situation like that, or any other situation where you want to encrypt data so deeply that you can outright deny its existence, what can you do? What if you want to hide your data, in a sort of cryptographic version of Inception, deeper than that? To this end we turn to an encryption concept known as “Hidden Volumes” and, conveniently, included as a tool in the TrueCrypt software we showed you how to use last week. You can’t, after all, deny that you have encrypted data if they already have possession of the file container or hard drive that is encrypted. If the other party knows you have an encrypted volume they can coerce you in some fashion to provide the password for that encrypted volume. What if you have data you want to keep hidden at all costs, though? Whether it’s because of a deep sense of privacy, a smattering of paranoia, or a legitimate fear of persecution from a corrupt government, there’s a critical flaw in using simple encryption, humorously highlighted in this XKCD comic: To that end you could follow our previous guide on getting started with TrueCrypt and be perfectly happy. After all, you’re not trying to prevent anyone from ever having access to your tax information (the government already has it all on file, after all) you’re just trying to protect yourself from identity theft if your computer is stolen. When it comes to securing something like your tax returns, a simple workflow built around strong encryption is more than adequate.

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Whether we’re talking about a simple Boy Scout Manual cipher or a hardened military-grade encryption application, the basic principle is the same: unencrypted data goes in, encryption mechanism is applied, encrypted data comes out. Most people are already familiar with the idea of encryption-using a simple or complicated encryption scheme, data is shifted in some fashion so that it no longer appears in its original state without decryption.