Introducing zEscrow -- or, How to save your encrypted life!

I had the honor of introducing zEscrow about a week ago, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit during Friday's plenary of lightning talks.  You can also view my slides now!


zEscrow is a free service offered by my employer, Gazzang, to users of Ubuntu's Encrypted Home Directory, to aid them in safely backing up and retrieving the bit of configuration and key material necessary to recover that data later.  I can't state this emphatically enough...

This very well may
save your encrypted life at some point!

The Quick Start Guide

If you're running a version of prior to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, first add the PPA:

  
  sudo apt-add-repository ppa:zescrow/ppa

  sudo apt-get install zescrow

And if you're on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, just install.

  sudo apt-get install zescrow-client

Now, just run zescrow, and follow the three simple prompts:

1. Choose your server
2. Enter your login password
3. Visit the one-time URL

How it Works

Some inquiring minds might want to know the nitty gritty details.  You're welcome to read the code, as Gazzang has released both the client and server as free and open source code in Launchpad under the AGPL.  Here's a narrative pseudocode of the algorithm though:

1. Choose your zEscrow server.  I recommend that you use the default, zescrow.gazzang.com.
2. The zescrow utility will download the public GPG key associated with your zEscrow server and load it into a temporary keyring stored entirely in memory.
3. Enter your LOGIN password.  This will be used to decrypt your ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase file.  Under NO circumstances will your LOGIN password will sent to the remote server!!!
4. The utility will create a tar archive of your entire ~/.ecryptfs directory, but replacing your wrapped-passphrase file, with unwrapped-passphrase.  This protects your LOGIN passphrase from ever leaving your system, but ensures that your randomly generated MOUNT passphrase will be securely transferred to the remote server
5. This ecryptfs.tar archive is securely transmitted to the zEscrow server over SSL.
6. Upon a successful transmission to the zEscrow server, a cryptographically nonced URL link is sent back to the client utility, which embeds a checksum of the transmitted archive, verifying the integrity of the transmission.
7. You MUST complete the transaction by opening the link IMMEDIATELY, to "claim" this upload as yours.  Upon doing so, you'll be required to login using Google OpenID.  
• (Yes, you must have a Google OpenID to use this service.  Sorry.  Send a patch, if you want support for another OpenID provider).
8. That's it!  You can now download your backups from zescrow.gazzang.com at any time, and use ecryptfs-recover-private to get your data back, following these instructions!

The Motivation

This might help explain why I have personally received hundreds (probably climbing north of a thousand) emails, IRC messages, forum posts, StackExchange questions, Launchpad bugs, SMS messages and even phone calls to my cell phone (!?!) from users who have forgotten their login password, or did not record their randomly generated eCryptfs mount password at installation, and are now cryptographically locked out of their own data :-(

Unhappy Users Don't Back Up their eCryptfs Passphrase

A few random quotes from the last 2 months alone:

• "Through idiocracy I have screwed up my encrypted home directory and if possible I need help getting it back."
• "I was trying to mount my encrypted home directory from a livecd in order to back up my data (according to the instructions), when I accidentally deleted one of the .ecryptfs folders in my encrypted home."
• "Mr Kirkland, my name is MB. I used an Ubuntu system with ecryptfs. Something happened and it all went up in smoke. I saved a backup and moved on. Chalked it up to bad backup practices and moved on. I found the encrypted backup a few days ago, and I've been trying to unscrew it. I *think* I found the old wrapped-passphrase file, and I tried to fix it. So far, I've been unable".
• "Please help as I am stuck in Korea and will be totally shagged without my e-mail and data. I have 6 months un-backedup work on the disk, of course. And I saved the password for the disk on my home partition...great move eh?"

I can't even respond to most of these emails, if it's clear that the user hasn't backed up their random, mount passphrase.  These are usually 16 or 32 characters of hexadecimal [0-9a-f], representing 128-bits or 256-bits of entropy.  You're doing battle with a mathematical Highlander at this point...  There can be only one, and the chances are absolutely astronomical that it won't be you :-(

But Happy Users Do Back Up their eCryptfs Passphrase!

On the other hand, I have helped hundreds upon hundreds of users recover their data, when its clear that they HAVE backed up their randomly generated MOUNT passphrase.  These two blog post of mine, about the ecryptfs-recover-private utility and how to mount your encrypted home from a live CD, are my two all-time most viewed posts.  A few quotes from happy users:

• "you saved my life, thank you!"
• "Where do I send hugs? It's great, thanks so much! I just want to add my note"
• "Worked like a charm - thanks."
• "YOU SAY IT! *YOU* *THE* *MAN* JUST SAVED MY LIFE! THANK YOU"
• "Thanks $deity and Dustin, this method works for recover my encrypted private directory and backup it to external drive. Thanks again for this tutorial."
• "Thanks Man!! it worked for me!!"
• "Today, making a liveCD and following your instructions above put a massive smile on my face. I can't believe I've now got access to everything again and nothing is lost. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge - I shall sleep well tonight!"
• "Thank you for this addition to Natty! I was having a hard time mounting my files on a system I wrecked ;)"
• "thank's a lot, u'r save my life"
• "My god. Thank you so much! I tried to upgrade to 11.04, and it wrecked my OS. This is a lifesaver."
• "This is cake my friend nice job! I remember when this was stuff was hard. I've been trying to recover a drive for some time now."
• "I just wanted to say thanks for building this. I used it to recover a ~/.Private directory on an external drive, and it worked flawlessly. It's folks like yourself building tools like this that makes open source projects such a pleasure to use. So kudos, and thanks."

If you use the free zEscrow service from Gazzang, in conjunction with Ubuntu's Encrypted Home Directory, and the ecryptfs-recover-private utility, you'll almost certainly be counted in the "Happy Users".  And if not...well, you're a bit on your own!  Please, please, please write down your passphrase and store it in a very safe, very private place!!!

:-Dustin