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8y

Asking for a friend: Well actually a friend asked me (since "I'm good with computers", you know it ;)) and no real solution came to my mind, so I thought, why not ask the internet

Anyways. She's an artist and does a project (kind of a documentation) about the Egyptian revolution. She currently lives in Europe but still has her Egypian passport. As an Egyptian national, she fears, that she could be holden back for a while and have her laptop/external HD with all the photos/videos/interviews confiscated and/or searched. She asked me for help to have a "backup solution".

The requirements: a way to backup work (from a mac) to a secure location (I would offer my server running linux for it).
The upload would have to be encrypted (if possible, I suggested to use a VPN, is this enough?)
Access to the files should only be granted if you have the propper password (in my opinion the VPN tunnel should work here too, as when it's down, you can't just reopen it without a password.

What are your thoughts on this?

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  • 0
    8y
    My 2c:
    Owncloud with encryption enabled would sync not only her mac, but also every other device, no vpn required.
    A good alternative, is rsync over ssh, but that doesn't encrypt data on the server side.
  • 2
    8y
    Why not just encrypt the files before they're sent, then require a key/password to decrypt?

    That way you don't really need to fuss with an encrypted connection if it's difficult. Both are best, but do file-side if you need to pick.
  • 0
    8y
    @starless
    Yes. Gpg would do the trick, but I know too little of mac, not sure if it supported. Owncloud is pretty easy to setup both server side and clients.
  • 0
    8y
    Why not work remotely? I have an Azure instance that I do most of my development on, and I know the address by heart. If you already have an MSDN account its not that much extra to include azure.
  • 1
    8y
    @monr0e there might be an Internet availability issue.
  • 1
    8y
    @starless @monr0e exactly. She'll work on large files (Indesign/Photoshop) and won't have for sure a stable broadband connection. So the files have to be local to work on.
  • 1
    8y
    @starless do you have any expirience with encrypting and decrypting files on mac (or a software you could recomend)?
  • 0
    8y
    @nbamaral will look into it, I've got a Synology NAS running at home, but I'll take a look at own cloud too.
  • 1
    8y
    @pascalwacker modern Mac stuff and Linux stuff share a lot of the same guts. I've worked with setting up pgp (pretty good privacy) support for email on a Linux box.

    I'd look into cross compatability there and use a little script to encrypt and send files to your server. Encrypting with pgp is very simple once you find a decent tutorial. There are a few steps, but you should be able to set it up in an afternoon or less.

    Once the files are encrypted, they should be reasonably safe even over an insecure wire.
  • 2
    8y
    or a easier method is to create a encrypted mount point in mac (no extra tools are needed google will tell you how) and upload it connected to vpn to a sftp server. you will be requierd ssl key + password for sftp and password to access the encrypted mount point
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