Linux / UNIX: Encrypt Backup Tape Using Tar & OpenSSL

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To encrypt a backup tape using tar and OpenSSL in Linux/UNIX, you can follow these steps:

  1. Create a backup archive using tar command. For example, to create a backup of /home directory, run:
tar czvf /dev/st0 /home

This will create a compressed backup of the /home directory and write it to /dev/st0 tape device.

  1. Use OpenSSL to encrypt the backup tape. For example, to encrypt the backup tape with a symmetric key, run:
openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in /dev/st0 -out /dev/st0.encrypted

This will use AES-256 encryption in CBC mode with a salt and write the encrypted data to /dev/st0.encrypted file.

  1. Verify the encrypted backup tape. You can verify the encrypted backup tape using the openssl command. For example, to decrypt the encrypted backup tape, run:
openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -in /dev/st0.encrypted | tar tzvf -

This will decrypt the encrypted data and pipe it to tar to list the contents of the backup archive. You should see the contents of the /home directory.

Note that in this example, we used a symmetric encryption key. If you need to use asymmetric encryption, you can generate a key pair using OpenSSL and encrypt the backup tape with the public key. The encrypted backup tape can then be decrypted using the private key.

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