Privacy

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How to randomly pad files before encryption to prevent file fingerprinting? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi, I was planning to encrypt my files with GPG for safety before uploading them to the cloud. However, from what I understand GPG doesn't pad files/do much to prevent file fingerprinting. I was looking around for a way to reliably pad files and encrypt metadata for them but couldn't find anything. Haven't found any recommendations on the privacyguides website either. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks

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[–] scott@lem.free.as 25 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just use rclone. It does this natively.

[–] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Can you point to where such a capability is mentioned in the documentation? I'm using rclone right now

[–] uzay@infosec.pub 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Here

[–] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Thanks, this is great!

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I recommend making a giant tarball and encrypting that with gpg and then encrypting again with rclone.

[–] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't be able to do incremental backups in such a case

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes. Security has trade offs. But cloud backup storage is cheap.

[–] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Is there no way to encrypt the metadata of files using GPG? And how do people pad their files to prevent fingerprinting? Surely I'm not the first person to be asking about this? I haven't had much luck searching online

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 1 points 6 months ago

The files metadata is encrypted with GPG. Except for GPG metadata, which is minimal

[–] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 months ago

GPG/PGP turns takes the file and turns it into random bits that only someone with the private key can unrandomize. There is no file metadata left. There is no nothing left. I believe the sizes are even consistent (0-1024kB files will be the same output size.)