Is there any risk to recording the unencrypted form of encrypted folder names?

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

Question: Is there any risk to recording the unencrypted form of encrypted folder names?

If the directory files appears as 9372h91v13sqo4futa16s6ag when encrypted with rclone (password only, no salt) and an attacker knows that it would be "files" when decrypted, does this pose a threat?

i.e. can an attacker use the information that "9372h91v13sqo4futa16s6ag" = "files" to decrypt any other files or any other file/directory names?

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.64.2

  • os/version: slackware 14.2+ (64 bit)
  • os/kernel: 5.10.28-Unraid (x86_64)
  • os/type: linux
  • os/arch: amd64
  • go/version: go1.21.3
  • go/linking: static
  • go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

local (via SMB)

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone lsd remote-crypt:

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

[remote]
type = alias
remote = /mnt/remote/

[remote-crypt]
type = crypt
remote = remote:
password = XXX

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

Paste  log here
2

This is known as "known-plaintext attack" and for modern encryption algorithm like one used by rclone is not useful at all. So do not worry.

But it was handy in breaking Enigma during WWII:) cryptography made massive progress since then.

2 Likes
3

check out
How secure is encryption

4

Thank you. My use case is keeping a record of decrypted directory names so I can delete them from the alias without having to go into the crypt remote so I will do this.

5

instead of keeping track maybe use rclone cryptdecode

$ rclone cryptdecode --reverse remote-crypt: files
files 	 9372h91v13sqo4futa16s6ag
6

This is for browsing with a file browser on a drive that is mounted as the alias rather than the crypt.

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