gocryptfs - simple. secure. fast.

gocryptfs uses file-based encryption that is implemented as a mountable FUSE filesystem. Each file in gocryptfs is stored one corresponding encrypted file on the hard disk. The screenshot below shows a mounted gocryptfs filesystem (left) and the encrypted files (right).

The encrypted files can be stored in any folder on your hard disk, a USB stick or even inside the Dropbox folder. One advantage of file-based encryption as opposed to disk encryption is that encrypted files can be synchronised efficiently using standard tools like Dropbox or rsync. Also, the size of the encrypted filesystem is dynamic and only limited by the available disk space.

This project was inspired by EncFS and strives to fix its security issues while providing good performance, see the Comparison page for benchmarks.

The Cryptography page details gocryptfs's cryptographic design. The highlights are: Scrypt password hashing, GCM encryption for all file contents, EME wide-block encryption for file names with a per-directory IV.

gocryptfs has reached version 1.0 on Jul 17, 2016. It has gone through hours and hours of stress (fsstress, tests/stress_tests) and correctness testing (xfstests, integrated test suite). It is now considered ready for general consumption.

The old principle still applies: Important data should have a backup. Also, keep a copy of your master key (printed on mount) in a safe place. This allows you to access the data even if the gocryptfs.conf config file is damaged or you lose the password.

Linux is fully supported. Beta-quality MacOS support is available, which means things usually work fine, but you may hit the odd issue (please file a ticket if you do!).

Third-party implementations exist for for

gocryptfs is, and always will be, free software.

News

Latest release: Latest release

2020-05-09
Release gocryptfs v1.8.0 (changelog)

2019-05-17
Release gocryptfs v1.7 (changelog)

2018-12-01
gocryptfs is added to the offical Arch Linux repo (commit, package info)

2018-08-18
Release gocryptfs v1.6 (changelog)

2019-07-29
gocryptfs is added to Fedora 30 and rawhide: package info

2018-06-12
Release gocryptfs v1.5 (changelog)

2018-04-27
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is released, including gocryptfs v1.4.3: https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/gocryptfs

2017-06-20
Release gocryptfs v1.4 (changelog)

2017-06-17
Debian 9 "Stretch" is released, including gocryptfs v1.2: https://packages.debian.org/stretch/gocryptfs

2017-04-29
Release gocryptfs v1.3 (changelog)

2017-03-10
Taylor Hornby of defuse.ca releases a cryptography design audit of gocryptfs: announcement, audit

2016-12-04
Release gocryptfs v1.2 (changelog)

2016-10-30
Added description of Reverse Mode to the website

2016-10-19
Release gocryptfs v1.1 (changelog)

2016-07-17
Release gocryptfs v1.0 (changelog)