Encrypt a directory in Windows 11 and decrypt it in Debian Linux

General
1

hi,
is it possible to encrypt a directory in Windows 11 and decrypt it in Debian Linux ? and vis-versa?
Thanks

2

Hi Granier,

yes, it is possible. Basically tar is used as an archive application to hold the directory.
(The tar implementation used is different in a few points from e.g. GNU tar, but for most purposes that shouldn’t matter.) If you use gpgtar coming with GnuPG on GNU/Linux machines, you will have the best compatibility. But using tar after decryption oder before encryption should work also.

Also see the technical documentation for gpgtar (Using the GNU Privacy Guard) .

Best Regards,
Bernhard

3

Plain old .zip files are also cross-compatible between Linux and Windows, assuming perhaps that you don’t need special filesystem features like links. Compress your folder on Windows, encrypt the zip file. Transfer the zip file along the insecure communication channel, decyrpt on the Linux machine, extract the decrypted zip file to make the new folder. And you could take a sha256sum when compressing (I’m sure there are Windows tools for this, somewhere), and after decrypting at the Linux end do sha256sum on the file and make sure it hasn’t changed (if it has then that would be indicating file corruption or tampering during transit).

4

Why this complicated?
Simply encrypt+sign with gpgtar and decrypt+verify with it on the other side, too.

If one does not like the command line for gpgtar (I still have to look up the syntax almost every time), use Kleopatra (File → Sign/encrypt folder; for decryption it is the same action as for files).
On Windows you can sign+encrypt folders via the Explorer context menu, too.