Bug#784359: ITP: luckyLUKS-gtk -- Gtk-GUI for creating and (un-)locking encrypted volumes from LUKS/TrueCrypt container files
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Jasper van Hoorn <muzius@gmail.com>
* Package name : luckyLUKS-gtk
Version : 1.2.0
Upstream Author : Jasper van Hoorn <muzius@gmail.com>
* URL : https://github.com/jas-per/luckyLUKS
* License : GPLv3+
Programming Lang: Python
Description : Gtk-GUI for creating and (un-)locking encrypted volumes
from LUKS/TrueCrypt container files
luckyLUKS-gtk contains alternative gtk2 (python2) and gtk3 (python3) packages
of the qt-based application luckyLUKS, that provides a graphical interface for
using encrypted LUKS/TrueCrypt container files [1]. Encrypted containers offer
some advantages compared to encrypted partitions especially for casual users :
-> No need to deal with partition table wizardry when creating an encrypted
container, you basically create a file on a harddrive, it doesn't matter if its
an internal one or an external usbstick etc..
-> Backup is straightforward as well, just copy the file somewhere else
-> sharing confidential information: again, copy the container file. similar to
gpg encrypted archives but easier to handle: unlock -- view or modify data --
lock again
-> You can easily add some encrypted private data to an unencrypted external
harddrive without repartitioning
-> Lots of users are already quite familiar with all this, because their first
touch with data encryption has been TrueCrypt which uses the encrypted
container approach
The success of TrueCrypt has been based on making the rather complex operation
of handling encrypted data easy to perform, even for casual computer users -
using containers (simple files) instead of partititons helped a lot in reducing
that complexety, because many casual users are confident in handling files,
while only a much smaller group likes to deal with partitions.
Right now support for encrypted containers in Linux faces a bit of a chicken-
and-egg problem: To encourage users to encrypt their personal data everywhere a
simple interface to handle encrypted containers and getting used to the concept
is needed. Ideally support for encrypted containers could be provided by an
application tightly coupled with a desktop environment or file manager, but
this won't be a priority as long as there is no demand from casual users.
The aim of luckyLUKS is to help testing the water by providing a GUI for all
the basic needs in regard to encrypted containers. To enable efficient
integration into most current desktop environments without requiring
substantial dependencies, the major current toolkits are supported: gtk2/3 and
qt4/5. All versions have been extensively tested on the current debian releases
and various debian based distributions.
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=780114
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