Score:0

Accessing from local Ubuntu a remote encrypted external drive connected to remote Windows

me flag

In a remote location there is an external drive that was encrypted like that:

https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2015/04/encrypt-usb-stick-linux/

Also in the remote location there is a Windows 7 machine on which "remote desktop" has not been set up.

The remote external drive is plugged into the remote Windows machine.

I have the password required for accessing the remote external drive.

My local machine is Ubuntu 18.04.

How can I access and read the content of the external drive from my local machine, preferably without making changes to the remote Windows machine, e.g. without setting up "remote desktop" on the Windows machine?

Is it possible to do it from a GUI app on my local machine?

waltinator avatar
it flag
Ubuntu 16.04 has passed its End-of-life date, and is no longer supported on AskUbuntu.
me flag
Sorry, my typo. Corrected.
ar flag
AFAIK it can't be done. There are no app that runs in Windows 7 that works with LUKs encryption. Even if there were a Windows app for LUKs, your requirement of no changes to the Windows 7 machine means no new software installation. See [this question](https://superuser.com/questions/584883/how-can-i-access-volumes-encrypted-with-luks-dm-crypt-from-windows) for a solution using Windows 10 and WSL2.
me flag
I don't know if technically somebody already wrote a tool for this task, but I don't see a reason why conceptually it cannot be done. If the local Ubuntu has an access to the encrypted file (i.e. drive) on the remote machine, then it is supposed to be able to read it just like it does on the local machine (although slower).
me flag
The solutions you linked to try to let Windows do the decryption. What I think is needed is just let the local Ubuntu have access to the remote drive, and do the decryption on the local Ubuntu machine. For example, if the remote machine has a video file with a format that can be read only on the local machine, then it should be possible to watch the video file from the local machine, although it cannot be done on the remote machine if you had a direct access to it.
ar flag
If the whole drive is encrypted it is probably formatted `ext4`. Windows does not read that format. Windows can't give Ubuntu access to a drive it it doesn't understand the format.
me flag
On my machine I have several ext4 partitions, and a Windows partition. Windows cannot read the ext4 partitions, but Ubuntu can. I have not tried it, but I think that if I ran an Ubuntu instance from within Windows, it could read the ext4 partitions.
me flag
Your terminology does not make sense. Obviously, the local OS (Windows) can read the external drive. Otherwise it has no way to decide if it can understand it or cannot. What it cannot do (at least not without some additional help) is understand ext4. But the same way that Windows reads the external drive data, it can send this data to the remote OS and let it try to figure it out. I don't see any conceptual impossibility here. Although I am not familiar with the technical details of how to do it (which is why I posted the question).
mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.