How to lock a folder?

mortified SG

Hi, if I have a folder which i wishes to lock, is there any ways?

**and no, its not porn**

Alucard101 SG

Folder lock.or u can use true crypt to make a volume and to protect it.

LatecomerX SG

Hi, if I have a folder which i wishes to lock, is there any ways?

**and yes, its porn **

If you are on Windows XP on a disk drive which is using the NTFS file system (you can check that by reading the properties of the disk drive under My Computer), and your Windows account is password-protected, you can try out NTFS' in-built encryption system. Right-click the folder you wish to lock > Properties > General - Attributes - Advanced... > Check Encrypt contents to secure data and click on OK. After doing so, the folder will be accessible by your Windows account only.

Another way would be archiving the folder with WinZip or WinRAR and setting up a password protection for the archive file.

mortified SG

Another way would be archiving the folder with WinZip or WinRAR and setting up a password protection for the archive file.

Thanks for the info LatecomerX, but it might just forever if i archieve the folder, is there any way the folder can be locked because my pc is using adminstrator, there's no profile, so i was having this impression if a programme could be used to lock so whoever that tried to open that folder, a box will pop-out prompting for password.

Help needed, thanks.

ndmmxiaomayi SG

You can crack this in less than one minute or more, depending on how much data you have. Plug in your thumbdrive and copy everything out. Encryption broken.

Help needed, thanks.

One way is to zip up the file. Another way is to upload it to private file hosting server. I choose the latter. But the bad thing about it means you need an internet connection to download and upload those files.

mayi's way = bad way.

http://windowssecrets.com/2007/12/06/01-Hide-sensitive-files-with-Alternate-Data-Streams

newcomer SG

You can crack this in less than one minute or more, depending on how much data you have. Plug in your thumbdrive and copy everything out. Encryption broken.

mayi's way = bad way.

http://windowssecrets.com/2007/12/06/01-Hide-sensitive-files-with-Alternate-Data-Streams

wah! pro pro pro... now i know how to stream files liao...

but kinda hard to manage files leh.

ndmmxiaomayi SG

Eh... the streams are not those online streaming videos streams... read the article link. For good or bad, it depends on how you use it. Just be careful of some antivirus scanners, they can scan and remove these files for good.

If you really want it secret, using Alternate Data Streams (ADS) is one of the best ways. Most users have no idea what they are. Of course, the most secret way is to have no soft copies of it anywhere on the hard disk. Your brain is the best hard copy.

newcomer SG

ya i meant streaming the files u wanna hide.

LatecomerX SG

You can crack this in less than one minute or more, depending on how much data you have. Plug in your thumbdrive and copy everything out. Encryption broken.

Erm. I don't think the files are automatically decrypted when you copy the files to a removable drive while on an Windows user account different from the one you encrypted the files with.

LatecomerX SG

Help needed, thanks.

If you just need password protection via archiving, switch off the compression option and the archiving process will be much faster.

manyu882 SG

use a third party program to do the locking... but it might be very tedious and risky

ndmmxiaomayi SG

Erm. I don't think the files are automatically decrypted when you copy the files to a removable drive while on an Windows user account different from the one you encrypted the files with.

To understand things, you must break things. Or at least, according to the ant's philosophy.

Have a thumbdrive? Or a partition formatted in FAT32?

If so, try the following:

1. Create a file in the NTFS partition, encrypt it.

2. Log in as another user and try to access this file. Tell me what you see.

3. Copy the file to the thumbdrive or a FAT32 partition.

Tell me what you see.

Next...

Got a computer on the same network? If so... start sharing the file.

Copy over the encrypted file to the computer. Then see what happens.

Lastly...

Email the encrypted file to yourself. See what happens to the file.

Not many knows how the EFS works on Windows. You can read up about it after you've finished playing.

Some questions to ponder:

Why I particularly state thumbdrives and not any other removable form of media. Other forms of removable media can be used, but I'm going to leave it out for now. External HDDs are a separate discussion, this shall be explained why when someone could figure out the reason.

Why I didn't state use Linux to break it since EFS only works in one particular file system?

Happy experimenting.

LatecomerX SG

Erm. I don't have computers on the same network here. So you mean the method you have mentioned actually gets the files decrypted? Could it be due to that the user account on the destination computer is an administrator or assigned as a recovery agent?

ndmmxiaomayi SG

If don't have computers, never mind. You can try emailing yourself.

Anyway, all 3 methods I've mentioned will actually decrypt the files while they are being copied or send over to somewhere. Either 3 methods will break Windows EFS.

The only time it didn't happen if another user tries to access the encrypted file NORMALLY. That means physically you are at the system, logged on as another user and tries to access it. Without the proper credentials, you will encounter errors. It doesn't decrypt for any matter, administrator or restricted account.

You can read up on EFS to find out why.

Edit: grammar error.