I have installed a Cryptomator vault on Onedrive, mainly it is for Word files. Now I have discovered the following problem with the vault locked: When I click on the files from the vault in Word under “Recent” (where the path to the virtual drive is specified as the path), it takes a while (a bit longer than when the vault is open), but Word can open the file (even though, as I said, the vault is locked). Apparently Word finds a copy here somewhere. Several questions arise for me here:
Where exactly is this copy located? (I couldn’t find it with the search function - in a temp folder?).
Is the copy stored unencrypted? (obviously yes, otherwise Word could not open it)
Is it only on my PC or is it also in the cloud? (If the latter, Cryptomator would either be BS or, more likely, I have something set up wrong).
I have to admit, even if the copy was only on my PC, I think it would be problematic; anyone with access to my PC could access the file, even though it’s actually in the locked vault. My suspicion is that it might have something to do with Word’s “Auto Save” function, is that right?
(Sorry if this question has been asked before).
Hi and welcome.
The files in the vault are encrypted. The encryption happens local. And the encrypted vault files are the ones you sync with your cloud. Just open your browser and have a look at your storage content. If there’s only gibberish files, everything is right.
And you might want to read this
https://docs.cryptomator.org/en/latest/security/security-target.html
Cryptomator is not designed as a local full system encryption solution. And as far as I know: yes. Office keeps file in its cache.
If you want to secure your local system by encrypting it totally , I recommend using a solution that is designed for that purpose. Like bitlocker or Veracrypt or something similar.
Thank you, that reassures me, I was not aware of this until now. I have only recently switched to Cryptomator; I did not have this problem with Boxcryptor; however, I used Boxcryptor in conjunction with Dropbox.
What made me suspicious were mainly the paths of the files that are displayed to me in Word and which, as I said, can be accessed even though the vault is closed. They look like internet links:
http://cryptomator-vault:42427/p8lBWocgBwoR/ …
But they are not really “internet links”, right? They point to a location on my local hard drive, some temp folder, right? (Because the virtual drive of the vault is closed at this time, after all).
This is the path to your virtual drive. Seems like you are using WebDAV as Volume type. I recommend switching to WinFSP. It’s shipped with cryptomator.
As said, this is the path to you virtual drive. This is used to show your files in your vault in your file explorer. The physical, encrypted files of your vault are local. Have a look at aunt list on the left side in cryptomator. Below every vault is the path where your files are actually stored (encrypted).
Thanks, I switched to WinFSP; now the last opened files in Word only show the letter of the virtual vault drive and the files can only be opened if the vault is actually open.