Tomb - Encryption Tool

Home: https://dyne.org/software/tomb/

Tomb is a command line encryption tool that makes it very easy to quickly encrypt files. Basically Tomb creates encrypted storage folders for you to place files in.

Installation

To install pass use your systems package manger. See below for some examples.

## Arch
sudo pacman -S tomb
## Void
sudo xbps-install -S tomb
## Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install tomb

Configuration

No configuration is needed.

Usage

The below are instructions on how to create a secured folder and the encryption key that you will use to secure the folder. Note that you can name your secured folder and key anything you want. Note that due to permission problems it is recommended that you use “sudo” when executing tomb.

# This command creates your secured folder, "-s" sets the size in MiB.
sudo tomb dig -s 100 yoursecret.tomb
# This command creates your encryption key to use on your secured folder.
sudo tomb forge yoursecret.tomb.key
# This command secures your secured folder with your encryption key.
sudo tomb lock yoursecret.tomb -k yoursecret.tomb.key

The below instruction is for how to unlock and open your secured folder.

# This command opens your secured folder using your encryption key. The "-k" Specifies what key to use.
sudo tomb open yoursecret.tomb -k yoursecret.tomb.key

The below instructions will show you how to securely close your folder after using them.

# This command closes your secured folder.
sudo tomb close
# This command force closes all your secured folders.
sudo tomb slam all

Usage - Hiding Key in an Image (Optional)

One cool thing that Tomb lets you do is to hide your encryption key inside an image. To do this you first must have Steghide installed.

sudo tomb bury -k yoursecret.tomb.key someimage.jpg

Now to open your secured folder with the image instead of the encryption key follow the below.

sudo tomb open yoursecret.tomb -k someimage.jpg

If you want to recover the encryption key from the image run the below command.

sudo tomb exhume someimage.jpg yoursecret.tomb.key

End

Things to note about Tomb are that it is a command line tool, so if that’s not your cup of tea then it might not be for you. But if you do decide to use it know that you will be presented with a really powerful simple method to encrypted your files, Tomb has some advantages over other similar tools the biggest being that it does promote separated storage of keys. This means that unlike most other encryption tools, Tomb allows you to store your encrypted folder and the encryption keys in different locations. This can allow you to place your encryption key in a portable device and leave the encrypted folder on your local computer.