Cryptomator. Encryption for your cloud storage.
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com. Hoping
to give you more confidence and less fear when it comes to technology.
Certainly one of the things we fear is that our data is somehow exposed.
And that's one of the reasons I think some people avoid cloud storage completely.
In the companion article for this video, Askleo.com
43770, I talk about what Cryptomator is and what its model is,
how it encrypts data on your machine before it ever gets uploaded to the cloud.
What I want to do in this video is
actually install Cryptomator and show you Cryptomator at work.
So let's switch over to Windows Eleven and we'll get it going.
So we're here in windows eleven.
I'm going to open up my OneDrive folder so that you can see that it exists.
It's got some files in it.
It has OneDrive's personal fault,
which is completely unrelated to anything we're about to do today.
But I've got some folders,
the desktop documents, pictures, transfer, basically things that I've created.
And I'm using this OneDrive account for anything that I copy into my OneDrive
account right now is essentially unencrypted.
That means anybody with access
to the account, be it a hacker, Microsoft admins, or law enforcement,
could then get access to those documents that I have there.
That's something, like I said, that makes people nervous.
So I'm going to fire up the browser here and we're going to go to Cryptomator.org.
We'll click on Download now and we'll click on Download.
You can see that it's available for Windows Ten and Eleven.
I'm going to click on the installer
and just let that run once it's in place, open file.
At this point, we're done with the browser.
So I'm going to close that to get it out of the way.
I've still got my Windows Explorer behind me, windows File Explorer behind me.
I'm going to minimize that.
We'll come back to that later.
Naturally, we need to agree to license terms and click on Install.
Now, as it turns out,
I'm not the administrator on this machine, and that's okay.
So I do need to type in a password.
And after passing UAC, it starts the install process and we're done.
We've got it installed, but it's not really running just yet.
You'll see that normally there would be a notification area icon.
When the program is running,
click on the Start menu and there you can see crypto mater has been recently added.
So we'll go ahead and start it.
We want to add a vault.
I'm going to create a new vault in my OneDrive.
The name for the vault,
I'm just going to call it Secure because that's what it's going to be.
We'll put it in OneDrive,
and you can see here that it has already preselected a location for that folder.
It's going to create my OneDrive.
In my OneDrive, a folder called Secure, which is fine.
Now you don't have to do that.
You can change this location or you can actually put it anywhere on your machine.
It happened to notice that OneDrive is
here and it's assuming that OneDrive is what we're trying to secure.
But if you don't want to do that, if you want to use it with some other
service or you just want to use it in some other way, you can do that.
In our case, this is exactly what I want to do.
So I'll click on next.
Now, this is important.
I'm going to create a passphrase for this vault.
It's very strong and the passwords match.
Now, what's important here is that
as with so many of these very important passwords, do not forget this.
We'll have a recovery option here in a moment.
But if you don't have that,
if you forget all of the information for your crypto major vault,
then the contents of that vault will no longer be accessible to you.
Now, I am going to say better safe than
sorry, so that it will actually create a recovery phrase or key for me.
I'm going to create the vault and what it has here is a recovery key.
Now, you can see it just looks like a series of random words and in fact,
that's exactly what it is, a series of random words.
So I'm going to copy those and in my case, I'm going to go ahead and put those
into a text file, which I will then save somewhere else.
Now, I happen to choose a not particularly
secure location for that recovery key, just for expeditious sake.
But what's important here is that this recovery key will be required to access
your vault if you ever forget your password.
Conversely, if somebody else gets their
hand on this recovery key, they can access your vault without your password.
So make sure to save the recovery key in a safe and secure location.
Click on next.
Unlocking it means we are going to unlock the vault.
Now, before I unlock it, I'm going to take another look at it.
We can see we've created the secure folder here and in that folder is, well, stuff.
There's a couple of subfolders with random things that have random names.
This is what a crypto mater folder looks like when it is not mounted.
This is what is actually stored
in OneDrive and this is what is actually uploaded to OneDrive in the cloud.
It makes no sense without the decryption
key to use the files in that folder, we need to enter the password.
We can remember the password if we like.
That is a security issue for you to decide.
If this is a machine that you, for example, might be traveling with,
you do not want to remember the password because then you'll be able to mount this
vault without actually needing to specify the password.
That works great on desktop machines or
desktop machines that you're not traveling with.
That you feel relatively secure about.
If there's any question, always require the password.
And that means don't check.
Remember, password unlock successful.
The content is now accessible in its mount point.
I'm going to go ahead and reveal
the drive, which basically just opens up a new
instance of Windows File Explorer to this drive F.
Drive f is the secure drive.
Anything that I place here,
I'll go ahead and create a new text folder or text file and put some secret.
So let's assume for a moment that this is
really super sensitive data that we don't want anybody to see.
It is in this secure drive of F is a virtual drive that represents
the unencrypted contents of your Cryptomator vault.
As long as cryptomater is mounted,
as long as you have specified the password and this virtual drive exists,
you can access and use anything in that drive as you would any other.
What that means though is
that in OneDrive, if we take a look here, in OneDrive Secure, well,
there's stuff here, but once again it's completely meaningless.
We don't know what any of this is because it's encrypted data.
It's the encrypted data that represents the file we're playing with.
Now if I then I've made my changes to new
text document, I've saved my secure information.
What I can now do is go over to Cryptomator, which by the way,
is now in the notification area, and click on Show to bring up the application.
Reveal drive is simply something
that opens up Windows File Explorer on the drive lock.
Lock is what dismounts the drive.
In fact, if you'll see over here in this PC, we have my local disk,
I have the FoeUSB drive, I've got a DVD drive and I've got Secure.
Secure is this folder full of sensitive data that is actually encrypted on disk.
If I go over to Cryptomator and say Lock, all that does is make that drive go away.
And you can see now drive F isn't here anymore.
If I go over to my OneDrive folder, secure is here.
All of the encrypted data that that drive represented is there.
But I can't access it.
You can't access it.
Cloud service provider can't access it.
A hacker cannot access it because it's all encrypted.
If I want to access the data
in that encrypted drive, I just come back to Crypto Mater and say unlock.
And once again I specify the password, I unlock the drive.
And now there it is again, secure drive F, this virtual drive, that is just
a view onto the encrypted data that's actually stored on the hard drive.
That's Cryptomator.
At its most basic, it is very easy to use.
It does a great job of keeping your
important data encrypted in such a way that online services such as OneDrive or
Dropbox or any of the others can easily synchronize the encrypted data safely
and securely into the cloud and onto your other machines.
And it restricts access only to you
by specifying the password and mounting the drive.
I hope this helps clarify a little bit of how Cryptomator works.
I strongly recommend that you visit
the companion article, Askleo.com/43770, because it also includes some information
about logically the concepts behind Cryptomator, how Cryptomator works.
Hope that was helpful.
I'm leo Notenboom for askleo.com. Thanks for watching.